Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 343
Chapter 3.13
The Dghweɗe bull festival (har daghile)
Introduction
The Dghweɗe word for the bull festival is har daghile, which means 'slaughtering a bull'. The
bull festival has already been mentioned several times in our construction of the Dghweɗe
oral history retold from the grassroots. The first time was in the context of Katala-Wandala
the daughter of Wandala-Mbra, who married Tasa, a son of Dghweɗe-Mbra, and they had two
sons, Gudule and Ske (Gaske). We also learned that not only Tasa had been married to a
daughter of Wandala, but also Zedima, a mythical Dghweɗe leader. The legend of Zedima
mentions a beer which he made to give to his people after they helped to put animal manure
onto his terrace fields. That beer had been poisoned by Wandala's daughter, and the people
died from it. However, the daughter stayed loyal to her husband, and told him what her father
had asked her to do. To take revenge on the chief of Wandala, Zedima went inside the earth
from where he collected the 'roots of the sun', which he then used to cause a severe drought.
Only Durghwe, the main rain shrine, still had water during the time of adversity described,
but this was only accessible by Zedima, and as a result the chief of Wandala had to leave for
Kirawa, after he had managed to survive by the grace of Zedima.
Both myths put emphasis on the control of rain, and the reference to manure in the Zedima
legend points to the importance of its regular application to the terrace fields. The bull festival
can also be interpreted in such a context. We have already learned in the previous chapter
how important for example was the ritual application of intestinal matter during the
harvesting and threshing period of guinea corn. We also remember the legendary traditions of
the mythological pairing of the cornblesser and the rainmaker lineages, as shown in the
Amuda and Ganjara tale. We spoke about the cosmological dimension of blessings from
below related to cornblessing, and blessings from above in terms of rainmaking. We were
able to establish that cornblessing had to do with increasing the yield of the harvest, while
rainmaking was important during the growing period of crops.
In Dghweɗe, the legend about Gudule and Gaske, of how the two brothers became ritual
specialists, tells a very similar story. Here it was Gazhiwe, one of the sons of Gudule, who
eventually became the most important Dghweɗe cornblesser lineage. According to the legend,
Gudule was punished for cutting off the white tail of his father's cow to give it to a girl he
desired. As a result of Gudule's misbehaviour, Tasa removed the gift of rainmaking from him
and gave it to his brother Ske, but Gudule remained cornblesser and custodian of the land, and
had the role of starting of the bull festival for the whole of Dghweɗe. Our oral sources speak
of Zhiwe, Linga and Mangala as the 'sons' of Gudule who stayed behind after their 'brothers'
decided to leave for Gudulyewe (meaning 'water of Gudul'), which is the Dghweɗe name for
Gudur. The reason why some of the Gudule left was that they had been finally defeated by the
expanding Vaghagaya, who then asked the Gudule not to leave completely. The names of
their lineage brothers who left for Gudur (Gudulyewe) are not known, but from then on the
Gudule had to listen for the sound of the drums of the bull festival coming from Gudur before
they could start their own festival for the rest of Dghweɗe.
Some of our oral history accounts claim that Gudule himself did not come from Gudur, but
only wanted to leave for Gudur, and that the brothers wanted to take their potent clan
medicine with them to increase in number. We remember that Mughuze-Ruwa, the father of
Vaghagaya, was once considered a local nobody who married the daughter of Hembe, and
that Gudule and Hembe were considered as early settlers of a pre-Korana southern Dghweɗe.
We like to hypothesise that the Vaghagaya needed them to take care of the fecundity of the
land, being the dedicated first comers. Because the bull festival was seen as the main
communal festival, the ritual role of the Gudule as its custodians was subsequently applied to
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