Ethnographic History of Oromo Folklore Study: Ethiopia

Abstract

This study has two aims to attempt: first, to revisit the historical background of Oromo folklore research and ethnographic undertakings and, second, using historical and literary approaches to explore the individual (and group) folklore research endeavors with a special reference to the Oromo team of 1880s and ’90s at Monkullo, Eritrea, Northeast Africa. The rationale for focusing on the Monkullo team is the relative massive work of Oromo folklore collection for linguistic endeavors and bible translation by the former slave young Oromo evangelists. The examination of the history of Oromo folklore shows that in the beginning the preoccupation was with collection, which was made not by folklorists or for folklore scholarship. Hence, I posit, the folklore collection made by emancipated former slave young Oromo boys and girls with their mentors at Monkullo, Germany, and Lovedale in South Africa, has a pivotal role in the history of written Oromo language and Oromo folklore research. Towards this end, the archival collection of interviews in Shell’s Oromo Diaspora Narratives and other documents can be used for a broader study of Oromo folklore. The ex-slave young Oromo boy’s, Gutama Tarafo’s four-page essay, which he read to the Lovedale Literary Society in 1897, is a case in point. The essay is dense with primary information about the Oromo world-views, food-ways, traditional costumes, lifestyle, and marriage custom of the time. The core hypothesis of the present study is that Oromo folklore collection which began in the 19th century served as a wellspring, a repository, for other undertakings including lexicography, (bible) translation, and folklore study to the present.