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

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All one hears is noise without pattern, like that of Oguntolu's bell.

You aspire to taking a chieftaincy title and you say you will not get into a fight.

You use a leopard's skin as an ingredient for medicine to hold off death; had the leopard not died would you have had access to its hide for the medicine?

You danced at Ifon town and Ifon became desolate, you danced at Èjìgbò and Èjìgbò was split asunder like a rag, now you came to Ìlà Ọ̀ràngún and you commenced to wiggle your buttocks; were you given a mission to ruin all towns associated with gods?

You made no secret pact with minnows, and you entered into no covenant with the ìrókò tree; yet when your needle dropped into the stream you proposed to retrieve it.

You made no secret pact with the lagoon and you entered into no covenant with the ocean; yet when your needle dropped into the stream you proposed to retrieve it.

You made no secret pact with Ọya, and you made no covenant with Ògún, yet your neddle dropped into the river and you proposed to find it.

You did not hit the giant at night time, but you hit him in daylight.

You have no shoes on on the thorny path and yet you are running; do you have a cow's “hoof” power?

You have not captured a slave, but you are already saying you will sell him/her only to an Àdò person.

You propose to become a king but you refuse to join the Ògbóni society; you will not last long on the throne.

You are pleading with the medicine man but not with the demented person; what if the medicine man produces the medicine and the demented person refuses it?

“It's coming! It's coming!” is what one says to frighten a child; after it has arrived it loses all its terror.

You pray to the being from heaven to grant you a boon; yet you can see the person being chased by the masquerader and whose stew the masquerader has consumed.

Leaving the home he did not purchase dried meat; after arriving on the farm he says dried meat is the indispensable thing to eat corn loaf with.

You see a leper's ears and you value it at twenty cowries; does it lack sufficient thickness or is it not red enough?

You see the footprint of an imbecile and you do not take soil from it to make a charm; where will you find the footprint of a wise person?

You state your case in the morning and you are not vindicated, and at nightfall you plead with the king to delay a bit and listen to what you have to say; isn't what you have to say in the evening the same thing you said in the morning?

You run from death and seek refuge in a scabbard.

“I have experienced it before”; a grown chicken flees at the sight of a kite.

He woke up from sleep and spoke in scrambled language; he said, “Let us wake it in moos.”

You are on earth “alive” and I am on earth, and yet you ask me what heaven is like.

It is proper that the masquerader know who tethered the ram.

A woman never remains where her well being rests.

The vagina is not a thing for showing hospitality.

The parrot becomes fully initiated into the secrets, his tail feather becomes a non-initiate.

The mortar used for pounding yams will not do for pounding indigo leaves; the mortar for pounding indigo leaves will not do for yams; the tray on which beads are displayed for sale will not do for displaying dried okro.

The òdú vegetable is not something the farmer does not know.

The inheritance is never so abundant that one shares it with neighbors.

Twenty or a score? An imbecile's puzzle.

An elder's voice: if it does not yield yams ready for pounding (for food), it will yield yam seedlings ready for planting.

That which one comes upon is nothing to compare to what one has always had.

It is what one has that one uses to spoil one's child.

It is something one has never seen before that is taboo for the eyes.

What one does in the home of one's parents-in-law leaves no room for “I am bashful.”

The same thing that keeps one from having more than one item of clothing also keeps that one from blackening from dirt.

Whatever limits the size of a farm is the same thing that makes it overgrown with weeds.

Whatever deprives one of one's sight is the same thing that shows one the way.

It is what resembles a thing that one compares it with; peanut shells are most like the nest of the rodent ẹ̀lírí.

If a thing that vows to decapitate one only knocks off one's hat, one shounld be thankful.

If whatever promised to make one a slave only makes one a pawn, one should accept one's fate.

Ohunalese who dashes his head against a sack of cotton wool; people asked if he did not see the rock nearby; he replied, “One should vow to do only what one can safely accomplish.”

It has not yet stopped raining and some observe that today's rainfall is not as much as yesterday's.

The jealous woman does not snatch her head gear off; all she can do is threaten a fight.

The jealous woman lacks flesh on her chest.

It is on its face that a plate accepts soup.

A cutlass has only one edge.

One should not because of one's suffering try honing one's eyes on the ground.

One is never so desperate that one drinks red sorrel juice; one is never so thirsty that one drinks blood.

An elderly person does not become embarrassed under cover of darkness; the stalwart squats nonchalantly.

A masquerader is never so shamed that he cannot find his way to the secret grove.

It is with the eyes that one tells the absence of palm-oil; it is with the mouth that one determines the absence of salt; if a stew lacks oil, it is the eyes that will tell.

Pimples attack only faces that are delicate.

“The nearer hill kept one from seeing the farther one” is not a proverb one uses in one's parents-in-law's home.

(The penis at home never impresses the woman, unless she fucks one outside the home.)

Farms do not, by virtue of belonging to a father and his son, lack boundaries.

A clean farm is a pleasure to weed; a clean-swept path is a pleasure to trod; all new wives are a pleasure to deflower; the new fashionable cloth of the season is a pleasure to wear.

Okotorobo, a bird, casts away a feather, and a young chick picks it up to dance with it; the one who shed the feathers asks, would I have discarded it if it was not a nuisance.

Okotorobo the bird lays an egg, and the turtle dove stretches its neck to inspect the egg that does not belong to it.

A dog is never to squeamish to eat a carcase.

The thief who stole the king's bugle could find nothing to steal.

A thief who stole a bugle, where will he blow it?

The medicine man behaves like a person impervious to wise counsel; if war threatens a town the person to consult for counsel is the sage.

The owner becomes a thief; “Take this and eat” becomes the owner.

The owner will not see what he owns and call it a fearful; abomination.

The idol worshipper who became a Christian; the day he first heard the organ play he lost his legs dancing.

It is a worthless child that points the way to his father's house with his left-hand fingers.

Someone who has food is worth dying with.

A person who knows proverbs has the last word in a dispute.

Those who have money will come, and those who will buy on credit will come; it is in one's town that one buys on credit; failure to eventually pay up is what is bad.

A rich person engages a dance band and you do not dance; when will you have the money to hire your own band?

(Only a foolish person enters into a secret pact with a woman: the day a woman knows a cult mystery is the day it is exploded.)

It is the fool that wears the Nupe masquerade; it is the wise person that collects the monetary gifts.

It is the firewood seller who sets a low price for his wares.

It is the owner of the calabash who first called it a broken piece of gourd before the world used it for scooping dirt.

Habitual debtor who butchers a pigeon for sale.

The goitered person sets a low price on beads; the person with a blocked nose repays six thousand cowries with alms.

The medicine man who is dissatisfied with a modest payment will wind up with nothing.

The favor is long past; the imbecile forgets.

The squirrel's head sits in a plate like a lump; if one counsels one's child it should listen.

The head that is destined to eat a vulture cannot be saved; if a chicken is offered to it it will refuse.

A head that refuses “to carry” loads will cost its owner some money.

A song that is not difficult to lead is not difficult to follow; if the leader sings “haaaay,” one responds “haaaah.”

The song changes, and the drumming changes to suit.

The god that says matters pertaining to Ògún are irrelevant will not find anything to eat when he/she wishes.

An elder does not lose his yams to the sun without knowing where the event happened.

The sun does not shine and cause displeasure in the farmer.

The moon appears and people say it is not straight; whoever can reach it let him go and right it.

The destitute person does not look to repairing his fortune; he says the partidge has been captured in a war, for the hunter is merciless.

If the amount of money is known, a child cannot die in slavery.

If money is available in abundance, a child does not die.

Money is what one uses to kindle the fire for money; if a thousand cowries grow from the branches above, one uses two hundred cowries to pluck them.

It is with money that we secure pleasures; it is with wisdom that one secures a good life.

It is money that brings a knowing person's trading to a conclusion.

The first money a youth comes into he spends on bean fritters.

The cotton seed does not open and thus anger the farmer.

Jealousy kills more surely than a cudgel.

The white man from Òkè Elérú; he collapses in front of Alọba's compound; cudgels will help him up.

87. The reference to Ogúntólú, a proper name, is obscure.  [Back to text]

88. All the towns mentioned are associated with important gods and cults.  [Back to text]

89. Ọya is the goddess of rivers and seas, and Ògún is the god of metals.  [Back to text]

90. Aspirants to chieftaincy titles often engage in bitter competition.  [Back to text]

91. The detail about the egúngún eating the poor person's stew suggests that the person praying to him as a being from heaven should have realized that the stew-eating figure is no heavenly being.  [Back to text]

92. Soil taken from a person's footprints is supposed to be a particularly good ingredient if one wishes to make potent and usually evil charms against the person.  [Back to text]

93. The tethered ram would be an offering to the masquerader.  [Back to text]

94. The parrot's colorful tail feather (ìkó) is the bird's main attraction, the chief reason why it is valued.  [Back to text]

95. The necessity to impress one's parents-in-law often mandates behavior one would not contemplate elsewhere and in other circumstances.  [Back to text]

96. The name Ohunalèṣe (Ohun-a-lè-se) means “That which one can accomplish.”  [Back to text]

97. When a woman makes ready for a fight she removes her head gear and ties it around her waist. A woman who merely crowds her adversary (já kooro sí i) is not ready to fight.  [Back to text]

98. The phrase “ojú pípọ́n” from which the proverbs in this series are formulated means “red eyes,” supposedly the sign of suffering. “Pọ́n” can mean both “to be red” and “to hone.” Hence the play in this proverb.  [Back to text]

99. A reference to squatting in a roadside bush at night to defecate.  [Back to text]

100. Kàkàkí was used exclusively to announce the presence of a king.  [Back to text]

101. Traditional worship is done to drumming and dancing, whereas the music in church is not for dancing.  [Back to text]

102. The expression “ogun-ún kó . . .,” meaning “be carried off or captured in a war,” means to be in serious trouble.  [Back to text]

103. The reference is to the practice of pawning oneself or a relative for a loan. If the amount is not infinity the redemption of the pawn cannot be an insurmountable problem.  [Back to text]

104. The suggestion is that a certain white man earned the enmity of a certain Alọ́ba.  [Back to text]