Folktale · Timeless · Legend
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The birds were invited to a feast in the sky. Tortoise had no wings, but he had a plan.
Once upon a time, the people of the sky decided to throw a great feast, and they invited all the birds. News like that travels fast, and soon it reached Tortoise. Tortoise had no wings and no invitation, but he had something he valued more than either: a sweet mouth. When Tortoise wanted something, he talked until he got it.
So he went from bird to bird. The birds knew him well. They knew he was cunning, and they knew he did not repay kindness. Tortoise told them he was a changed man. He spoke so softly and so long that, one by one, they gave in. Each bird plucked out a single feather and gave it to him. Out of all those feathers Tortoise made himself a pair of wings, and when the day came he flew up into the sky with the rest of them.
On the way, Tortoise had another idea. He told the birds there was an old custom for a feast like this one. Every guest, he said, takes a new name for the occasion. The birds had never heard of it, but Tortoise seemed to know so much about the world, and they liked the idea. Each bird picked a fine new name. Then Tortoise picked his. From now on, he said, his name was "All of you".
When they arrived, the sky people welcomed their guests and brought out the food. There were dishes of every kind, more than the birds had ever seen in one place. Tortoise, who had taken charge of the talking, turned to the hosts and asked a simple question. Who was this feast for?
"For all of you," the hosts replied.
That was all Tortoise needed. He told the birds that they had heard the hosts clearly: the feast was for "All of you", and that was his name. Then he sat down and ate the best of everything and drank the best of the wine. The birds sat and watched. When he was finished, there was almost nothing left for them but scraps and bones.
The birds were furious. One by one, each bird walked up to Tortoise and took back the feather it had lent him. Soon he was sitting there with no wings at all, high up in the sky with no way home. The birds flew off and left him.
Tortoise begged them to take a message to his wife. Only Parrot agreed. Tell my wife, said Tortoise, to bring out every soft thing in our compound and spread it on the ground, so that I can jump down and land safely. Parrot flew down to Tortoise's wife. But Parrot was still angry about the feast. So Parrot told her the opposite: her husband wanted every hard thing in the house brought out and laid on the ground.
From up in the sky, Tortoise saw his wife busy in the compound, laying things out. He thought he was safe. He jumped. He fell and fell, and he crashed down on top of the hard things, and his shell broke into pieces. A medicine man came and stuck the pieces back together. Tortoise lived. But if you look at a tortoise today, you will see that its shell is not smooth. It is made of patches. That, the story says, is why.
This is one of the best-loved Igbo folktales, and Tortoise is one of the great tricksters of West African storytelling. He is small and slow, so he lives by his wits. Very often his wits carry him too far. Children laugh at his tricks and then watch him pay for them, and the lesson lands without anyone having to preach it.
Millions of people around the world first met this tale in a novel. In 1958 Chinua Achebe put it into Things Fall Apart. In the scene, it is a dark night in Umuofia. Okonkwo's wives are each in their own huts with their children, and Ekwefi sits with her daughter Ezinma and tells her the story of Tortoise and the birds. It is a quiet, warm moment between a mother and her daughter, the kind of evening storytelling that families all over the world know.
Then the quiet breaks. Soon after Ekwefi finishes, a high voice rings out in the darkness. It is Chielo, the priestess of the god Agbala, and she has come to take Ezinma away to the god's cave in the hills. The gentle tale gives way to one of the most frightening nights in the book.
Readers have found more in the tale than a fable about greed. Some notice how much of it turns on names: Tortoise wins by changing what words mean. Others see in the uninvited guest who talks his way in and eats everything a shadow of what is about to happen to Umuofia, as strangers arrive and take over. Achebe never says so. He simply lets a mother tell her daughter an old story, and leaves it to us to listen.
