“Hale!” “Halele!”
Once upon a time there was a farmer who lived alone at the edge of his fields. He was hard-working and kind, but he was too poor to pay a bride price, and no family would give him their daughter. In the evening, he talked to his banana trees so as not to forget the sound of his own voice.
One day, he went to see the village's old wise man and told him of his sorrow. The wise man gave him a talisman: “Carve a woman from the wood of the most beautiful tree in your field, tie this talisman to her, and you will see. But beware: what the talisman gives, the talisman can take back.”
The man chose an orange tree in blossom and spent days carving its wood. When the statue was finished, he tied the talisman round its neck. The statue opened its eyes, breathed and smiled: it was a woman, more beautiful than any in the land. She sang as she worked, in an ancient language that no one understood any more, but which everyone found sweet.
The man was so happy that he was afraid of losing her. He hid her in his hut and only let her out at night. But a jealous neighbour discovered the secret and ran to tell the king: “In our village lives a woman more beautiful than your late queen.” The king sent his soldiers, and the woman was taken to the palace.
The farmer wept for a long time, then he remembered the wise man's words. He went to the palace, managed to get close to the woman in the garden and gently untied the talisman from her neck. At once, the woman became what she had been at the beginning: an orange tree, which took root in the middle of the king's courtyard. The king was left with nothing but a tree, and the man went home, the talisman clasped in his hand.
You do not own what you love, and the greed of the powerful brings them nothing but wood.
What we know about it
The theme of the tree or piece of wood turned into a woman is, according to the linguist Marie-Françoise Rombi, very popular in the Comoros. In 1978, she recorded in Mtsapéré (Mayotte) a version entitled “L'homme et sa femme en bois” (“The man and his wooden wife”), which can now be consulted in the CNRS Pangloss collection: the man without a wife, the wooden woman brought to life by a talisman, the abduction by the king, then the talisman taken back and the woman turned back into a tree. The storyteller sang part of it in Makua, a language of Mozambique, which he presented as that of his ancestors who came from Africa.
This sung passage is a reminder that the descendants of deported Africans have also enriched the tales of the archipelago (see Slave trade, slavery and raids). Another Mahoran version, in which the woman appears thanks to a talisman hung on an orange tree, has been adapted as a children's picture book under the title Le Secret de l'oranger.
Further reading
- Voices of the archipelago Collection Pangloss (CNRS – LACITO), Corpus mahorais : contes enregistrés à Mtsapéré en 1978 par Marie-Françoise Rombi. online sound archive with transcriptions.
- Voices of the archipelago Marie-Françoise Rombi, Trois pauvres, deux tyrans, deux princesses. Conte mahorais, 1979. Cahiers d'études africaines, vol. 19, nos. 73–76, pp. 549–578.
- Outside view Anne Lauricella (ill. Izou), Le Secret de l'oranger, d'après un conte traditionnel recueilli à Mayotte, 2011.