Part 2: On perspicaciousness (good judgment, perceptiveness), reasonableness, sagacity, savoir-faire, wisdom, and worldly wisdom

I

Asking “directions” keeps one from losing one's way; the person who refuses to ask is responsible for his/her own difficulties.

One's home is a legitimate place to buy things on credit; what is bad is avoiding payment.

One does not throw rocks at the place where one has one's palm-oil stored.

Where one began one's climb, there one effects one's descent.

Where one is eating food like mucus, one should not bring up matters like phlegm.

One should live according to the customs and fashions of the place one finds oneself in; if one lands in the city of lepers, one should make a fist, i.e., conceal one's fingers.

It is precisely where you will eventually have to sleep that you have laid down your child to sleep.

The vulture has endured the drenching rain from a great distance, but who sent the vulture on an errand?

Wherever the rain catches up with the day, there it drenches it.

Wherever the yọ̀nmọ̀ntì (food made from benniseed) seller falls, there she has sold all her wares.

As the bees hum and the small calabash containing charms hums, the intestine does not keep silent.

It is at its home base that a company or trade prospers.

The vulture did others a favor and became bald in return; the hornbill did others a favor and developed a goiter in return; in the future, one should not do those kinds of favor. [73]

The vulture did not go bald for fear of the razor.

One swears when it is time to swear.

It is a calabash that one cuts decorative patterns on; one does not cut patterns on china plates.

The rainy season passes, the dry season passes, and the suggestion is that the rat's burrow be sealed up tight; when will the time be ripe to kill the rat?

The time of one's arrival on the farm is one's dawn.

Whenever one first sees a person, that is that person's morning.

It is a calabash that understands one's language that one describes as a measure.

Had the snail been careless in its foraging it would have died in the bush.

Had the snail been careless in its foraging it would not “have grown large enough to” be worth twenty cowries.

The snail never embarks on a dyeing trade, and the spotted grass-mouse never digs for àràn.

The forest is the home for animals to live in.

The elbow develops a hump right from its youth.

A street fight is the death of a bashful person; warring is the death of a strong man.

It is dance that strips one of one's cloth; it is a fight that takes off one's shirt.

An abandoned well kills a horse and we rejoice; it will in time kill a human being.

Is a dog's house the place to go in search of horns?

It is in the home of a person who has food that one sets one's chest like a trap.

It is on the ground that the stool sits to await the buttocks.

One does not string decorative beads all around one's waist.

One enters the porch first before one enters the house.

It is time to get out of here, the gatekeeper of Atadi; his home was burglarized, his wife was taken from him, the divining string he was going to use to investigate matters was snatched by a dog, his son who ran after the dog to retrieve the divining string fell into a well; the gatekeeper of Atadi then spoke up and said, “It is time to get out of here.”

The fire of the stinging tragia plant does not burn a person twice.

It is too much fire that will ruin the stew of a bushman.

The fire that challenges water will die off.

The whip used on the senior wife is resting on the rafters waiting for the new wife.

Ìròrẹ́ cannot fight, so it makes its home close to the wasp's.

The fart within a masquerader's shroud “is” something to be endured.

The fate that has befallen the goat, the sheep should bear in mind.

Whether the yams are large or not, it is one by one that one extracts them from the heap.

The lemon plant that grows in the bush and does not support itself against something will be uprooted by the forest breeze.

The way a wise person looks at things is different from the way an imbecile does.

“My wife is not good looking, but I married her for the sake of children”; to how many people will one give that explanation?

The junior wife has said what will be her last; she said the senior wife's mouth is as white as the new yam.

The wife has done the unpardonable; her husband has adopted an I-will-not-eat-any-longer attitude.

71. Yọ̀nmọ̀ntí is a commodity that cannot be scooped up after it has spilled on the ground. The seller taking some to the market hopes to sell it all, but if she falls along the way and spill it, she is left with nothing to sell, just as though she has sold it all.  [Back to text]

72. The stomach will rumble to announce its hunger, even as the bees busily attack and the medicineman busily consults his charms.  [Back to text]

73. According to a folktale, Vulture agreed to take sacrifices to heaven on behalf of the other creatures when there was a great drought. The sacrifices were accepted, and torrential rain began to fall while Vulture was still on its way back. When it arrived back on earth no one would offer it shelter from the rain, which beat it so severely that it became bald.  [Back to text]

74. Traders in such things as grains or flour use calabashes as measures, and they resort to dexterous tricks to control just how much of the commodity the measure will hold from transaction to transaction. A good measure responds to the owner's wishes.  [Back to text]

75. Àràn is an insect that the field rat eats, but not the spotted grass mouse.  [Back to text]

76. The point of the elbow compares to the humpback's affliction, which is here construed as properly an affliction of old age. The elbow, however, always has the point, even when it is quite young.  [Back to text]

77. Ìlẹ̀kẹ̀ àmúyọ are highlighting beads interspersed with others and not made into whole strings by themselves.  [Back to text]

78. Ìròrẹ́ is used to describe fledglings, but in this case it is apparently some kind of flying insect.  [Back to text]