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J Irir'i'iir^ll'wiMtlitfViJIfifi"liTlliilirBiliii'iiTii^Ti" ii' VHilliam Bascom, Dirertor Museum of Anthropcogy University of California Berkeley 4, California r\^G \ I- IvJrT <f8^^^ 0^ V^ t ky / /-L^. /(jr^ ^l' VOCABULARY OI' THK GRUB LANGUAGE, Y A COMPILED BY TIIK REV. SAMUEL CROWTHER, NATIVE MISSIOXARY OF THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY. TOGETHER WITH INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, BY Tilft. , REV. 0. E. VIDAL, M. A. IJISHOP DESIGNATEOF .SIERRA l.EONE. SEELEYS, FLEET STREET, AND HANOVER STREET, HANOVER SQUARE, LONDON. 1852. UCRC pi ADVERTISEMENT. The Yoruba Country, lying between the 2° and 6° W. long, and 6° and 10° N. lat., and due north of the Bight of Benin, has been, for more than a quarter of a century, the chief seat of the African slave-trade. Many Negroes, and, amongst them, Mr. Crowther, now a Clergyman of the Church of England, the compiler of the following work, were re-captured from Brazilian slavers by the cruisers of the British squadron, and landed at Sierra Leone, where they received a Christian education in the schools of the Church Missionary Society. No less than 3000 of these involuntary emigrants have since returned to the land of their birth ; and it has also pleased God to bless the labours of the Society's Missionaries in the chief town, Abbeokuta, to the establishment ofa flourish- ing Mission amongst the Aborigines, commenced August 3, 1846, and now numbering several hundred converts. A Christian literature became at once a desideratum for this rising Christian community. This want Mr. Crowther is at present supplying. A Yoruba Primer, the Gospel according to St. Luke, the Acts of the Apo- stles, St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, the Epistles of St. James and St. Peter, and selections of the Book ofCom- iv ( ) nioii Prayer, embracing all the more important parts of it, except the Psalms, Epistles, and Gospels, are already published, and may, most of them, be obtained at the Society's House. A new and improved edition of Mr. -Crowtiler's Yoruba Grammar is now in the press, havinsj just received his revision and corrections. And it is hoped that the present work, containing near 3000 vocables, may do much toward settling a rich andeupho- nous language, spoken, probably, by 3,000,000ofthe Afri- can race, but till within the last ten years never re- duced to writing. The materials were collected by Mr. Crowther since his return to his native land, and the pro- verbial and idiomatic sayingsinterspersed throughoutthe book were taken down by him from the lips of his coun- trymen in the course ofcommon conversation. They are here introduced to illustrate the genius of the language ; but they are no less valuable ethnologically, as elucida- ting many ofthe characteristics of the national mind of this very interesting people. We refer the reader to the valuable details on both these points contained in the very able article with which this work is enriched, from the pe—n of one of the best liv- ing scholarsin African languages the Bishop Designate ofSierra Leone, whose first act upon enteringon his new see will be thus associated with a measure for the dif- fusion amongst the Yorubans, in their own tongue, ofthat Sacred Word which will be at once the standard and the subject of all his ministrations among them. The system of phonography employed in the Vocabu- V ( ) — lary which also contains the analysis or derivation of — each several word is that adopted by this Society in its " Rules for reducing unwritten languages to alphabetical writing in Roman characters, with reference especially to the languages spoken in Africa," appended to the Church Missionary Report for 1848-49, in which '^ it hasnot been attempted to form a perfect phonetic system, but one which practical experience suggests as the most expe- dient under all the circumstances of the case." A sum- mary of it, as far as it bears on the present subject, will be found atp. (40). The work is now sent forth with the prayerful hope that it may do much, in God's hand,towards facilitating the progress of the Gospel in a land which has peculiar claims on the efforts and sympathies ofEngland. Church Missionary House, April 12, 1852.