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The Stories of the Kikuyu

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Leonard J. Beecher
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Extract

Kikuyu stories, like all unwritten literature, tend to be fluid. No two people seem to know quite the same version of a story, and one person may give as one long story what another will tell you should be two distinct shorter ones. Moreover, practically all direct speech is quoted in the form of a song, both the words of the song and the music varying with different reciters. Kikuyu stories are full of repetition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1938 , pp. 80 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1938

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References

1 A man who contracts a matrilocal and matrilineal marriage is called, in Kikuyu, mivendia rohio (lit. he who sells his sword). He, being poor, has no other means of getting a wife than attaching himself to the household of a man who is willing to let him treat one of his daughters as his wife without the payment of the customary ‘bride-price’. In return for this, he works for his father-in-law. The children of such a marriage are reckoned as legitimate, though they count as members of the maternal grandfather's clan. Such a marriage is subsequently convertible into a patrilocal and patrilineal marriage by the payment of the customary bride-price.