Morrison, W. M. Buluba-Lulua Exercise Book. Luebo, Congo Belge, Afrique: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1912. First Edition. [7638]
Cloth spine with blue & pink marbled paper over cardboard, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches, pink end papers, round "Educational Department, Oct. 24, 1931" ink stamp on front paste-down. 83 clean pp., several pp. with print showing through to opposite side. Good. Hardcover.
No copies recorded of this first edition at WorldCat.
Robert Benedetto's article The Presbyterian Mission Press in Central Africa, 1890-1922 in American Presbyterians Vol 68, No. 1. (Spring, 1990) lists 29 publications of the Mission Press during those years, with this item being no. 19. "Contains 'a series of lessons based on the author's Buluba-Lulua Grammar and Dictionary.'"
Instruction in English with Buluba-Lulua texts for translation, vocabulary, &c. With Morrison's Preface containing practical advice for new missionary students, including, "Employ at once an intelligent personal boy, preferably one who does not speak English."
"The Presbyterian Mission and its Press have made a profound impact on the language of Central Africa. The mission not only issued the first written works in the Tshiluba language [Buluba-Lulua], it issued these publications in a transliteration which is a technical masterpiece, faithfully executed by William M. Morrison. Morrison's lexicographical work received the highest praise from the renown linguist Torday who referred to his Tishluba dictionary as 'a masterpiece which renders all similar work useless.' And Morrison's Tshiluba Bible, and as revised by later Tshiluba language scholars, is considered the literary monument and standard of the language, as the King James Bible is in English or Martin Luther's Bible in German. When students of Tshibula seek to ascertain a correct usage or translation, they turn to the Tshiluba Bible as a resource and model." p. 63 of the article above.
William McCutchan Morrison (1867-1918), b. near Lexington, Rockbridge Co., Virginia; d. Luebo, Congo. A missionary with the Presbyterian Church (South), he labored in the Belgian Congo as an evangelist and Bible translator. His writings exposed the abuses suffered by the natives at the hands of their colonial overlords.