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Folklore and History as Twin Rivers of World Heritage: A 

Personal Narrative 

 

By  

Bukar Usman 

 

 

Abstract 

This paper, originally presented at an International Conference on Folklore, National 

Integration and Development, held in Nigeria, appraises Tatsuniya (Hausa word for 

“folktale”) as a richly-endowed form of folkloric expression in many African and non-

African societies. It reveals that comparative study of the folklore of the Babur-Bura in 

north-eastern Nigeria and those of other countries, including the U.S, UK, Croatia, 

Jamaica, China and Sri Lanka, shows that folklore is a worldwide tradition whose roots 

could be empirically traced in history. Current studies in oral literature – or what the 

Ugandan scholar, Pio Zirimu, termed orature – have underscored the fundamental role 

folktales play as the earliest school of the child in many African communities. 

Tatsuniya is told both for its thrilling entertainment worth and for its educational values 

that further enrich the child’s appreciation of the culture and history of his community 

and those of others. This study presents folklore as a treasured world tradition that ought 

to be explored with the same vigour and interest archeologists and historians employ in 

digging deep into our distant past. After all, the often inseparable linkages between 

folklore and history tend to suggest that both are twin rivers that flow into the same sea. 

Keywords: folklore, history, culture, heritage, Babur-Bura, tatsuniya          

 

Introduction 

Let me begin this presentation which I deliberately titled, Folklore and 

History: Twin Rivers of World Heritage, with a personal confession. I am 

a firm believer in the truism that just as droplets of water form streams so 



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also do the collective actions of humans, either as individuals or groups, 

constitute the thread in human history.  

Being an enthusiast of African folkloric tradition, I opted to devote time, 

energy and resources in researching deeply into the rich field of my 

native Babur-Bura folkloric tradition.  In the course of this presentation, 

therefore, you will notice, at some points, that the arguments I advance 

are embellished with accounts from my personal experiences gathered 

from years of folklore research and publishing.  

It was in 2005, Voices in a Choir and my other publications on public 

administrative matters had been published and I had just handed in for 

publication the manuscript of Hatching Hopes, my autobiography. Duve 

Nakolisa, my publisher, himself a writer of note, then asked me, “Why 

not turn your attention to folktales in your area?” I reflected on the 

question and remembered what I had experienced at home as a child and 

similar events that took place during my initial years of Western 

education in the early 1950s. I recalled the tales by moonlight narrated 

mainly by my mother and the introductory literature books in Hausa we 

had read in class. I called to mind books like Dare Dubu Da Daya (One 

Thousand and One Nights) and several others written by Abubakar 

Imam. I then resolved to go into the field and chose my Babur/Bura 

community as my principal research ground.  

It was in the course of my research that I luckily met former Vice 

Chancellor of Bayero University, Prof. (Ambassador) Dandatti 

Abdulkadir. An expert in the field, he gave me very useful guidance on 

how to go about my assignment. I am immensely grateful to him for 

ensuring, through the careful review of the dedicated staff of BUK 

Centre for the Study of Nigerian Languages, that all my manuscripts 

written in Hausa were in accordance with standard Hausa language rules. 

The books in Hausa were published in two batches. The first batch of six 

books (Marainiya da Wasu Labarai, Jarumin Sarki, Yarima da Labbi, 

Tsurondi, Sandar Arziki, and Dankutungayya were published in 2005. 



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The second, comprising eight books (Gwaidayara, Dan Agwai, Tsohuwa 

da `Yan Mata Uku, Dankucaka, Al’ajabi, ‘Yargata, Duguli Dan Bajinta, 

and Muguwar Kishiya) were published in 2009. The publishing house 

was Gidan Dabino Publishers, Kano. The books are all in circulation 

within and outside the country. Within Nigeria, in Kano, Capital Primary 

School has included books 1-5 in their curricula. 

The books have attracted the attention of a German NGO, IRENE Sahel, 

which sought my permission, which I gave, to publish the stories in 

“Boko” and “Ajami” as a way of educating the girl-child in Niger 

Republic’s Qur’anic schools. So far, scholarly use is being made of the 

books outside the country at the following centres of learning: Hamburg 

University, Department of African Languages and Ethiopian studies 

Germany; School for Oriental and African Studies (SOS), London; 

Warsaw University Poland, Department of African Studies; UNESCO 

Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) Harmburg; Abdul Mumini 

University, Niamey; IRENE Sahel (NGO)-Germany; MAINZ University 

Department of African Languages, Cologne Germany; Institute of 

Research Studies, Dept of African Languages, Cairo University, Egypt.        

The use of indigenous languages in teaching is an initiative which 

UNESCO is vigorously propagating in its current programmes 

worldwide.  

Today, I can humbly say of the fruits of our collective achievement that I 

have written four short story books in English and fifteen in Hausa, all of 

them containing stories derived from our folklore. The fifteenth is the 

compendium of the fourteen books written in Hausa my Kano-based 

publisher has put them together as a readily available reference material. 

Twin Rivers of World Heritage 

The history of Africa, which includes the forceful enslavement and 

shipment to foreign countries of a huge number of its population, helped 

greatly in transporting and transplanting African tales to foreign shores. 



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Because the tales were spread by word of mouth, many scholars have 

observed, little variations in the storylines have occurred but without 

altering the essence of the tales. Its unique folktales, thus, constitute a 

very rich and fertile legacy that Africa bequeathed to many parts of the 

world, especially North America, South America, and the West Indies.  

In the vast continent of Africa and other continents, folktales and myths 

serve as a means of handing down traditions and customs from one 

generation to another. In Africa, especially, the storytelling tradition, 

used to prepare young people for life, has continued to thrive over the 

ages. Although oral tradition is declining with the emergence of modern 

forms of communication, the invention of the printing press fortunately 

facilitated the documentation of tales in written form and their 

preservation and circulation on a wider scale.     

Duve Nakolisa believes that some tales are historical and that such 

historical folktales tell the history of some ethnic groups. According to 

him (Nakolisa in Usman, 2006),  

In many parts of Africa, tales, generally speaking, are the history of the 

ethnic group and the ethnic portrayal of social interactions within the 

environment of that history. (Folktales) belong to the latter… (They) are 

not part of the grand tales of the origin of the people of the area, nor part 

of the revered exploits of any great ancestor. They do not belong to the 

canon of myths and legends, usually associated with dynasties and 

illustrious genealogies. Those ones belong to history, even where some of 

them sound somewhat like folktales. Indeed, under open and unbiased 

examination, many of such “histories” share canonical qualities with the 

simplest tale. That is why I assert that mythologies are generally the 

grandest form of the folktale tradition of any society, and the inspirational 

springboard for the ordinary tale. 

To buttress Nakolisa’s thesis which, as my research confirms, is also 

applicable to non-African societies, Khalid Imam (2010) further stresses 

that although most tales may have themes of universal concerns, a close 

study of some could reveal that such tales may well be telling the 

histories of some ethnic nationalities. He cites the popular story of 



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Bayajidda as a good example of a “grand tale” that lays claim to being 

the authentic origin of one particular group of people. 

Imam could have easily cited further examples from Nigeria where 

almost every ethnic group – and there are more than 250 of them – lays 

claim to one mythic origin or the other. The most celebrated of such 

“grand tale” histories includes the “Ogiso” story of the Binis which has 

the contentious twist of a Bini prince being the pioneering Ooni of Ife. 

Key Yoruba scholars believe the more popular version, namely, that 

Oduduwa is the progenitor of the Yoruba race. 

Similar “grand tales” from Nigeria are no less controversial. For instance, 

depending on the person telling the story, the Igala kingship is variously 

linked to the Yoruba, Nupe, Benin and Jukun. My own community of 

Biu has various versions of the origin of Yamtarawala, our own 

progenitor, equivalent to other legendary figures such as Oduduwa and 

Bayajidda.     

In all these and similar stories across the world, what is the dividing line 

between history and folktale? Judging from the foregoing, it seems 

reasonable to say that history and folklore, in narrative origins, are two 

rivers which meet at the confluence of the communal imagination. 

Comparative Study of Folktale Traditions 

Following the encouragement and guidance I received from my publisher 

and the likes of Prof Dandatti Abdulkadir, I decided to dig deeper into 

the subject of folktales. I forayed into existing literature on the subject, 

seeking to have a comparative understanding of the place of folktales in 

global literature. I relied mostly on books I could lay my hands on. On 

the few occasions I travelled out of the country, my first attraction was 

the nearest bookshop where I went to in search of books related to 

folktales. I did that during my visits to the US, Jamaica, UK, Croatia, Sri 

Lanka and China, and I made some useful purchases. 



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According to Gerda Charles (1976), the Egyptians were rendering 

folktales on papyrus and inscribing them on stone as far back as 1300 

BC. The Greeks later came out with Aesop’s Fables which contained 

stories akin to that of the Hindus. The Hindus, like the Egyptians, had 

also written their stories, in Sanskrit. These were later commented upon 

and amplified by the Iranians or Persians.  

The Arabians also adapted some and turned others into the famous 

Arabian Nights stories, some of which were embodied in the One 

Thousand and One Nights story book. It was the invention of the printing 

press in Germany which made it possible for folktales, such as the 

Arabian stories, to be reproduced and circulated in written form. 

Short stories derived from folktales were not the preserve of one nation. 

Towards the end of the 19th century, the English came up with Pickwick 

Papers by the great writer, Charles Dickens. Some of Shakespeare’s 

stories were rooted in folklore. The Germans, the Italians, the Japanese 

and the Russians have their own folktales.   

In the United States, Charles Colcock Jones Jr. (1831-1893) came up 

with Gullah Folktales from the Georgia Coast (1888). Also known as 

“Negro Myths from Georgia Coast”, it was told as vernacular tales he 

heard black servants exchange on his family’s rice and cotton plantation. 

The tales ranged from the humorous to the instructional and included 

stories of the “sperits”, Daddy Jupiter’s “vision”, a dying bullfrog’s last 

wish and others about how “buh rabbit gained sense” and “why the 

turkey won’t eat crabs.” The tales were rendered in Gullah, the language 

of the African Americans on the East coast, which is akin to what is 

popularly known as pidgin English in West Africa.  

Susan Millar Williams, who commented on the book, observed that the 

stories of 1888 were similar to West African stories and that they were 

imported into America by slaves taken to the Americas from that part of 

Africa. To the best of her knowledge, that was about the first book she 

knew on folktales in the US. The stories in the book used ghosts, foxes, 



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hares, squirrel, lions, leopards, land monitor (lizard /African alligators), 

hyenas, rats, elephants, and other animals commonly found in Africa, as 

characters. The stories were also laced with animals and insects found in 

the eastern parts of the USA. 

Back home, Prof. D. Waterman, who had done a lot of work in the field 

of folktales, found that F. Edgar and A.J.N. Tremaerne and Rudolf 

Prietze were reputed to have written books on Hausa folktales in 1904, 

1910 and 1911. The only indigenous scholar who had similarly done 

tremendous work in that field was Prof. Ibrahim Yaro Yahaya who wrote 

Tatsuniyoyi da Wasanni books 1-6 in 1972. Before then, North Regional 

Literature Agency (NORLA) published Tatsuniyoyin Zamani 

titled Almara in 1952, although the publication was not attributed to any 

individual as its author. 

Albert Helser (1923), the American who was among the foreign pioneer 

missionaries who brought Christianity to my Babur/Bura community of 

Borno State in North-East Nigeria, published 55 folktales gathered from 

the area. In the preface, he remarked that:  

A sincere attempt to understand native culture is the only fair and 

effective approach to the native mind. From the first day I set foot in 

Lagos, Nigeria, British West Africa, in 1922 I have been making honest 

effort to appreciate the native view of life...While the Bura people had no 

written language, we found that they had an unusually full system of 

culture embodied in their folktales.  

He noted the role of stories in ensuring that the heritage of shared values 

was transferred from one generation to another. His observation: 

It was a surprise to learn that quite small boys and girls had a rather clear 

idea of the socially desirable ends which had been set up by the Bura 

tribe. These ends had been taught and emphasised through the folktales 

which had been passed on by word of mouth. The most respected women 

of each community had assumed the responsibility of passing on the 

culture of the tribe by telling stories to the younger children in the 

evening time. The older children carried on by reciting the stories to one 

another.  



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He was describing the society in which I grew up and it is a mark of the 

sustenance of that tradition that I was able to gather several folktales in 

less than one year of research effort.  

Franz Boas in the foreword to Helser’s book (Helser, 1923, p. 7) threw 

some light on the universality of the folktales phenomenon.  He stated 

that: 

The collection of Bura Tales by Mr. Helser adds another one interesting 

collection from Africa that have appeared from time to time... Early 

attention has been called to the wealth of African folktales by Bleek’s 

“Renard the Fox in Africa”, a series of interesting animal tales. Materials 

from all parts of Africa, so far as they are available, illustrate the power of 

imagination of the Negro. They also show the interesting relations 

between all parts of Africa, and the migrations of tales from one part of 

the continent to the other. 

They also prove that many of our folktales and much of the homely 

wisdom laid down in proverbs is common property of Africa, Europe, and 

Asia. Many of the African tales have a particular interest for us because 

their equivalents are found among our American Negroes, for instance in 

the well-known Uncle Remus tales. 

Commenting further, Franz Boas said: 

Folktales from all parts of the world are of particular interest because they 

illustrate with great clarity the mode of thought, the homely wisdom, and 

the ethical concepts of the people. In Africa, more than among other so-

called primitive tribes, many a tale illustrates a proverb relating to the 

proper everyday behaviour. The Negro is fond of moralising by means of 

moralising tales. 

I can confidently confirm from the annotations at the end of each of the 

folktales in my publications that there are indeed many morals in the 

stories. Not only that, the stories are as varied as there are literary 

categorizations: you have the comic, the tragic and the tragi-comic; then 

there are the horror or terror stories.     

And the characters are imbued with diverse qualities: some exhibit 

wisdom, cleverness, bravery, strength and nobility whereas others are 



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characters of cruelty, foolishness, selfishness, cunning, and sluggishness. 

The clash of the contradictory qualities of the characters in a folktale is 

geared towards moulding the character of the child during his or her early 

education in the informal setting.    

Nelson Mandela (2010), former President of South Africa, attests to this 

when he recalled that: 

After supper we would listen enthralled to my mother and sometimes my 

aunt telling us stories, legends, myths and fables which have come down 

from countless generations, and all of which contained some valuable 

moral lessons. As I look  back to those days, I am inclined to believe that 

the type of life I led at my home, my experiences in the veldt where we 

worked and played together in groups, introduced me at an early age to 

the ideas of collective effort. The little progress I made in this regard was 

later undermined by the type of formal education I received which tended 

to stress individual more than collective values. Nevertheless, in the 

mid1940s when I was drawn into the political struggle, I could adjust 

myself to discipline without difficulty, perhaps because of my early 

upbringing. 

Historical Significance of Folktales 

While Skinner (1980) categorizes folktales by themes and characters, 

Duve Nakolisa (2006) draws attention to the historical dimension and 

includes in his categorization historical tales which narrate social 

interactions.  

The historical relevance has earlier been underlined by Harward 

(Musaeus-Higgins, 1910) who remarked that: 

All children love a story...though there are many stories which may fairly 

be considered to belong to all races and all countries, there are folktales 

which only come home to the people of a particular race or country. To 

the latter class belong the tales by which a child gains its first notions of 

the history of its own land and people. 



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The following dialogue (Musaeus-Higgins, 1910) between a teacher 

(referred to as ‘mother’) and one of her students (‘Somarawattie’) further 

illustrates the place of history in folktales: 

     “Please mother, about what year are we now in History?” 

     “King Manavamma died 726 AD,” answered mother, “and I am sorry I 

have to tell you some more sad things, before we come to another great 

King.” 

     “Oh, I don’t think the stories now are half as nice as they were at 

first,” called out an impudent little Somarawattie. “At first you told us 

about golden boats and beautiful Asoka-Mala, and now! Well, they are 

not so interesting.” 

     “Well, my little girl, how do you think I can tell you interesting 

stories, when no interesting things have happened? Look here! I am 

telling you stories from History, I don’t make up the stories and so you 

will have to be satisfied with what I can tell you.”  

    Somarawattie felt a little ashamed when she received that answer and 

she saw that she was wrong. She came up to the mother and said 

pleadingly:  

    “Please excuse me, dear mother; I will try to remember that you are not 

making the stories from Ceylon History but that you tell us what has 

happened in our country long ago. I am sure we are learning something 

from all the stories you tell us, even if they are not as pretty as some of 

the former ones. 

 

To further underscore the historical significance of folktales, Ratnatunga 

(2010), author of Tales from Sri Lanka:  Folk and History, said in the 

preface that “It is of utmost importance that the record of the island’s 

folktales is preserved for the day when we are sane again; when we can 

remember what was before Terrorism and Tsunami.”    

The blurb is even more explicit: 

Sri Lanka, one of the most beautiful islands in the world, has a rich 

cultural history of more than 2,000 years. Tales from Sri Lanka is an 

attempt by Manel Ratnatunga to preserve the fast-dying, oral literature 

and traditions of the country and to make people aware of their national 

heritage. 



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Through these tales, Manel Ratnatunga has succeeded in reminding 

people about their glorious past which has been handed down from 

generation to generation. 

The general appeal of the stories as well as their historical relevance is 

also emphasized: 

The fascinating stories, retold in a lucid and simple style, will succeed in 

keeping readers of all ages spellbound. A blending of folklore and history 

make the tales more interesting and lively. This collection gives a rare 

glimpse into the captivating culture and history of Sri Lanka. 

The Future of Folktales Research   

Some critics distinguish between “creative” literature and folktales.  Of 

course, value should be placed on new thinking as that is one of the ways 

the society develops. It is necessary, however, to consolidate 

achievements made and one way by which this could be done is to dig 

into the past, preserve and pass on the findings to generations to come. 

Archaeologists and social scientists are doing so. Mankind is currently 

making some breakthroughs in technology which in future will be subject 

of study as to how we reached this far. 

As miners dig into the ground in search of precious mineral resources; so, 

it could be argued that similar effort needs to be made in digging into 

folktales to find the hidden treasures. The field is unlimited. One such 

effort was made by Parker (2003) who published five hundred and 

nineteen tales of Ceylon in three bound volumes with a total of 1,243 

pages.   

That was for Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, a country of 21,513,990 people 

(2010) with two principal ethnic groups, the Sinhalese and the Tamils. 

For Nigeria, which has a population of about 140,431,790 million people 

(2006 census) with over 250 ethnic groups, it will be a full time job for 

anyone to compile as many of their folktales as possible. 

Abela Publishing (Jacobs, 2009) which reprinted 43 English folktales 

first published by David Nutt (1890) dedicates the book thus: “To the 



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teachers and story tellers who keep folklore and history alive through the 

telling and re-telling of these tales.”         

Abela went on to invite readers to:   

Take some time out and travel back to a period before television and 

radio, a time when families would gather around a crackling and spitting 

hearth and granddad or grandma or uncle or auntie would delight and 

captivate the gathering with stories passed on to them from their parents 

and grandparents from time immemorial. 

As I found out in the course of gathering the folktales in my community, 

this beautiful picture painted by Abela no longer exists today and the 

fairly old people, who are the repositories of oral literature, are fast 

disappearing. Folktales narrated by such people, therefore, need to be 

reduced into writing. 

The following five goals of Klamidas Classic Folktales series (Usman, 

2005, pp. 11-12), to which I have added the last two objectives, are some 

of the aspirations which motivated me to delve into folktale research and 

publishing: 

 To present through multimedia the best folktales around the world 

for the enjoyment of everyone, thereby promoting cross-cultural 

understanding and respect for story-telling and other traditions of 

the world’s diverse peoples. 

 To revive the age-old practice of telling children instructive tales 

by preserving in writing many of the stories which are believed to 

be fast disappearing as their human repositories pass on. 

 To encourage the younger generations to appreciate, through the 

story-writing workshop (to which a segment of some of the books 

in the series might be dedicated), the educative and artistic 

qualities of the folktales of every culture. 

 To inculcate in the students, through theory and practice, the art 

of short-story writing. 



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 To contribute, through the morals drawn from the tales, to the 

moral upbringing of children as well as the moral regeneration of 

the larger society, thereby reinforcing the need for the pursuit of 

worthwhile goals. 

 To provide additional pleasurable reading materials for the young 

and old in their leisure hours. 

 To provide reading materials with illustrations from familiar 

environments to supplant or complement foreign publications. 

Chuma Nwokolo (Sunday Trust, October 30, 2011), legal practitioner 

and author of Diaries of A Dead African, has stressed the importance of 

preserving African traditions:  

We must have constant conversations between our past and our future, 

which should tell us how to live in the present...Once the basic needs – 

food, shelter – have been sorted out, the next imperative is...identity... I 

visited the British national archives in Kew Gardens and was struck by 

the overwhelming number of elderly folk researching their ancestry. 

Because, in Africa, our elderly folk are the best custodians of our 

folklore, the folklore researcher is, therefore, racing against time. While 

one should not over romanticize the olden days, it must be recognized 

that folklore, particularly orature, has assumed new importance as a field 

of study. It promotes oral traditions, including the desirable art of story-

telling and the shared values and enduring wisdom that emanate from it.  

Besides, folktales are universal and can be used to unite mankind more 

remotely than sports or the internet is currently doing. Every country has 

got its own share of folktales which its people can share with others, 

thereby demonstrating the oneness of mankind. Says Jacobs (2009): “Up 

to 1870, it was said equally of France and of Italy that they possessed no 

folktales. Yet, within 15 years from that date, over 1000 tales had been 

collected in each country.” 

The harvest from Nigeria is even more amazing. In my small community 

of Biu, which has a population of 452,304 (2006 census), I collected over 



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1000 folktales within two years. Helser (1969, p. 8) had collected over 

800 tales in the same community in the 1920s. The potential in Nigeria 

for gathering folktales is, therefore, quite enormous. 

Retaining a Folktale’s Original Flavour 

While rendering the folktales I derived from my Babur/Bura cultural 

setting in Hausa language, I consciously tried to retain the flavour of the 

original tales. I chose the Hausa language for wider circulation within 

and outside Nigeria while bearing in mind the current UNESCO 

emphasis on writing in the vernacular for purposes of language 

preservation and ease of learning by the child.      

Chinyere Obi-Obasi, one of Nigeria’s budding authors, may somewhat be 

right in her assertion that folktales “can be retold in any fanciful way as 

nobody has copyright over them” (National Mirror, August 5, 2011). 

However, she is not absolutely right because folktales belong to the 

community of their origin and there is a limit to which they can be 

acceptably altered. 

I have, in the case of my tales rendered in Hausa, tried as much as 

possible to maintain the form and content of the original Babur/Bura 

folktales. I was guided by Rev. Albert D. Helser (1969, p. 11) who 

researched 55 Bura folktales which he published in a book way back in 

the 1920s. He remarked in his preface: 

At first I translated the stories as I heard them and wrote them in English. 

After I had completed a number in this way I found that I was losing the 

native flavour of the stories, so I burned them. I started again... I have 

tried to preserve the indigenous spirit of the stories. My translation is as 

literal as it was expedient to make it.  

Indeed, he said it was unusual to tell tales in the daytime. “The spell of 

the dark is necessary to the full appreciation of the stories,” he 

emphasized. 

 



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Re-creating the Original Tale 

I would like to re-visit the dichotomy between “creative” writing, on the 

one hand, and oral folktales captured in writing, on the other. Let me 

begin by noting that there are four major ways of capturing an oral 

folktale in writing; they are: transliteration, translation, modification, and 

adaptation.   

To transliterate an oral tale means representing its letters or words using 

equivalent letters or words of another alphabet. For instance, the Hausa 

warning, “Ba shiga” strictly transliterated into English would read, “No 

Enter,” or “No Entrance” if loosely transliterated. 

To translate an oral tale means rendering it using the words and idioms of 

a new language to make it textually meaningful to the hearer or reader of 

the new language. Translation is not necessarily a word-for-word 

exercise. The above simple example, “Ba shiga”, could in translation into 

English be rendered as “No road”, “No passage”, “No thoroughfare” or 

even, loosely, “Go back.”  

Modification, in the sense in which the word is used here, means 

changing key elements of the original tale in order to infuse into it fresh 

elements, such as new characters or sub-plot. Modification usually takes 

place when there is need to amplify or modernize the folktale and build a 

bigger story out of it without losing the essence of the original tale.      

It is in the process of modification that the short-story writer, deriving his 

material from folklore, has a great deal of creative latitude. Indeed, 

modifying an oral tale from its oral source and re-telling it in writing in 

another language is as creative as any short-story writing effort can be.  

Modification is not mere translation. It is translation enhanced by 

additional information and the re-ordering of key elements of the original 

tale. Modification is an exercise in creative writing. Many of the stories 

in my three short-story anthologies published in English, namely, The 

Bride without Scars, The Stick of Fortune, and Girls in Search of 



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Husbands were modified versions of oral tales. But the reader of these 

stories would easily see that the modified versions written in English 

(and it could have been any other language) are more elaborate than their 

comparatively shorter and simpler oral versions, especially in terms of 

plot and characterization. As for literary devices, modified and written 

forms of oral tales are stylistically very similar to the modern short story; 

in fact, they are modern short stories with traditional roots. 

We move now to the fourth method – adaptation. The traditional 

meaning of adapting a work of art to new uses is intended here, except 

that apart from being a change from one genre to another (e.g., from a 

folktale to a radio play), it is also, in this context, a change from the 

original language of the folktale to a new language (e.g., adapting a Biu 

folktale to a radio play in English).       

Evidently, a combination of two or more of the four methods I have 

identified above is very possible. The creative writer inspired by folklore, 

one may conclude, can only be limited by his own imagination. His 

creativity, rather than being hindered by tradition, can be enhanced by it.  

Conclusion 

It is an established fact that folklore and history are among the two most 

treasured world traditions. They are so vital that objects and monuments 

whose relevance are essentially folkloric and historic in nature are 

designated around the world as “cultural heritage” by the UNESCO 

“Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and 

Natural Heritage” of 1972. 

Going by the facts which emerged from the comparative study detailed 

above, folklore and history really share some vital things in common. 

They maintain a symbiotic relationship. Folklore tells tales and some of 

the tales tell the history of communities and of mankind.    

It is in the light of the above postulation that this paper is advocating that 

scholars, students and researchers should focus serious attention on the 



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study of folklore with the same vigour archeologists and anthropologists 

employ while digging deep into our distant past.  

Maybe I should add, in closing, that I have conducted research in the 

folklore and history of my native Biu area, in north-eastern Nigeria, and 

that I have, hence, experienced and observed the close affinities between 

these two aspects of a people’s cultural evolution. Indeed, the often 

inseparable linkages between history and folklore tend to suggest that 

they are twin rivers that flow into the same sea.         

 

Works Cited 

Helser, Albert D. African Stories. New York: Revell, 1923. 

 _____ Education of Primitive People. New York: Negro University 

Press, 1969. 

 

Jacobs, Joseph, English Fairy Tales. London: Abela, 2009.  

Mandela, Nelson, Conversations with Myself. London: Macmillan, 2010.  

Ratnatunga, Manel. Tales from Sri Lanka, Folk and History. Vijitha 

Yapa Publications, 2010. 

Musaeus-Higgins, Marie. Stories from the History of Ceylon  for 

Children, 1910. 

Nakolisa, Duve. “Introduction” in Usman, Bukar, Girls in Search of 

Husbands and Other Stories. Abuja: Klamidas, 2006. 

National Mirror, August 5, 2011. 

Parker, H.. Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon Vol.1-3, New Delhi: AES, 2003. 

Sunday Trust, October 30, 2011, p. 30.  



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Usman, Bukar, The Bride without Scars and Other Stories. Abuja: 

Klamidas, 2005. 

______ The Bride without Scars and Other Stories. Abuja: Klamidas, 

2005. 

_____ Taskar Tatsuniyoyi. Kano: Gidan Dabino Publishers, 2012. 

 

 

Author Information: Dr Bukar Usman is the President of 

Nigerian Folklore Society. Email: bukarusman@gmail.com. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


