Oedipus: A Folklore Casebook

Oedipus in Alur Folklore

Oedipus in Alur Folklore A. W. Southall Although this tale has an Oedipal theme, it does not belong to the Oedipus tale type. The complicity ofthe mother is noteworthy. The tale was reported from Uganda by anthropologist A.W. Southall of the University of Wisconsin. There was a youth called Uken. He was having playful argument with his mother. "Now you are old, mother," said he. "But was I not a girl once too?" countered his mother, "surely if I dressed up the men would look at me still!" "Really, mother," answered Uken, "you who are all old now, who do you think would look at you?" Now when his mother heard what he said, his words sank deep in her heart. The next morning Uken was exchanging promises with a girl friend, and the girl promised that she would come to him that day. Then Uken's mother devised a trick. She stripped off all her old skin and there she was with complexion as clear as long ago when she had been a girl. By the time the youth came back from his walk it was night. He found his mother lying on his sleeping place. She was beautiful from head to foot, glistening with the oil she had used to anoint her body, and wearing beads of many kinds. I There she was lying relaxed on the sleeping place. So when her son came and entered the hut his eye lit up at the thought that perhaps the girl who had made him promises had really come. And so he lay with his Reprinted from the Uganda Journal; 22 (1958), 167- 169. 35 36 A.W. Southall mother that night. At first light his mother went out and left him on the bed. She returned to her hut and put on her old skin. Then when morning came Uken got up and went to his mother's hut to ask her for food. She said "Your mother, your mother, just now you were lying with your mother there-did you know that you have a mother?" When Uken heard his mother speaking to him in this way, rage seized him and he went back to his hut without a word. Next he got out his spear and his arrows. He whetted their blades keenly. Then he set out aimlessly into the bush, with his horn to his lips blowing on it the while. "Mother, you have dishonoured me, mother you have dishonoured me. To whom will my wife fall now? Mother you have dishonoured me. To whom will my child fall now? Mother you have dishonoured me. To whom will my granary fall now? Mother you have dishonoured me." So he went far away. He went and found a great tree, then he planted his spear and his arrows in the ground under the tree. And after that he climbed to the top of the tree and threw himself down on to the spear and it stabbed him to death. When he had died, then his body began to decay and when it had decayed completely, mushrooms sprouted from the spot. An old woman came to uproot the mushrooms and they said to her "Ah! uproot us gently! Don't just break us!" Then old woman uprooted the mushrooms and returned to her village with them. The mushrooms said "Don't cook us! just store us away in a pot." So the old woman stored them in a pot. Then the mushrooms rotted and bore maggots. The maggots changed into flies. The flies changed into baby rats, and those rats into a big mother rat. Then the rat turned into a baby boy. The child began to grow bonny until slowly he began to walk. The old woman was rearing him on cow's milk. He grew up and began to herd cattle. Little by little Uken became a youth just as he had been before. When Uken saw that he was full grown he began to consider: "What shall I do to make my people recognize me?" He told the old woman to brew beer, then he held a dance. This dance gathered together Oedipus in Alur Folklore 37 many people and his own folk also came to it. Then, when the dance was in full swing, Uken began to blow his horn, singing: "Mother you have dishonoured me, Mother you have dishonoured me. To whom will my wife fall now? Mother you have dishonoured me...