Part 3: On cageyness, caution, moderation, patience, and prudence

Odot

Only those who struggle with one know one's strategies.

Ọ̀bàrà receive a cudgel blow; it consulted the Ifá oracle for a disobedient child.

Purveyor of general disaster, who carries a gángan drum into town.

“Stew is the breast milk of adults” is what killed the calabash repairer of Ògòdò town.

The ṣìlò knife is playing with one and one says it is not sharp; just as in play it slashes one's hand.

The sort of stew you cooked and set the house on fire, you will explain.

Inspector of the ground inspects the ground; if a goat wishes to lie down it first inspects the ground.

The monkey will be its own death.

Sprightly person who hurls himself sidewise against a tree.

Habitual criminal bird that eats oranges.

The hunter who would kill elephants with his cap; his fame lasts only one day.

The never-soil-your-foot-with-mud dandy eventually soils his whole body.

A full-grown warthog is not something to confront.

The banana is rotting, people say it is ripening.

A fool carries a cudjel around.

The iron stake has been driven into the ground; the problem now is how to pull it out.

It is excessive cunning that kills the mature cane rat.

Excessive cleverness turns one into a phantom; if there is too much magical charm it turns the owner into an imbecile; if a woman is too cunning her husband's clothes wind up ill-fitting.

Today's wisdom, next year's madness.

It is with cunning and patience that one brings an elephant into town.

The day one is destined to be lost one is never able to contain one's excitement.

The day one arranged one's corn in the granary, one did not think in terms of the rat.

The day farming entails being careful not to hurt the soil, one should stop farming.

On the day the white flying ants wish to swarm, the worms that prey on them keep still.

“It is” an insatiable farmer who plants cotton on a farm by the stream.

Covetousness, father of all diseases.

Covetousness, father of thievery; bug-eyed greedy person stares at another person's property without blinking.

A greedy person takes a morsel of food and tears gush from his eyes.

The covetous person arrives in a gathering, and his eyes dart about restlessly.

The greedy person does not drink other people's blood; he drinks only his own.

Impatient envy is not a good state in which to seek anything.

The insatiable cat that sits in the doorway, does it want to kill cats in another house?

It is an insatiable Ṣàngó priest who names his son Bámigbóṣé one should procure for oneself a ritual rod one can carry.

Covetousness and thievery are similar to each other.

The insatiable person receives twelve thousand cowries out fourteen thousand; he asked that the remaining two thousand be shared, perhaps two hundred of them will come to him.

The squirrel scrambles up the ìrókò treé the fire in the hunter's eyes is doused.

The boat is leaking, the boat is leaking! After it sinks won't matters end?

Broom sticks drop off one by one.

The millipede knew the way before it went blind.

A man who marries two jealous women has no one to tend his home in his absence.

“Tomorrow I take my leave,” who uses a shallow pot as his water jar.

“Greatness won't let me see”; the son of the Èwí, king of Adó, who lights a lamp to walk with in broad daylight.

It is the person who separates two fighters who gets gashed on the head.

A hunter does not fire off his gun because of the wind.

The excessively cunning person is trying his hand at stealing.

A chick flies up, and we exclaim, “A game animal has escaped, alas!”

The seeds in an ayò game are not things to be angry at.

The child of your rival-wife dies and you say the person who saw you in heaven did not lie; what if your own child dies?

A child insults an ìrókò tree and glances back apprehensively; does it take revenge immediately?

A child wakes from sleep and says in code, “Bean fritters two-by-two.” Had the others been taking them thus before he woke would any have been left?

A pestle is a lethal weapon in itself, let alone after rubbing poison on it.

The drunkard does not drink the gourd through.

A short cut causes a person to land on his palms.

The road to the secret grove of the egúngún cult may lead to heaven.

It is by missing one's way that one learns the way; if one does not fall one does not learn how to tie one's load properly.

The road will eventually expose the thief; the farm hut will eventually expose the farmer.

The pathway of the throat, the pathway to heaven: the two are very much alike.

The walking-stick that is carried on the shoulder, which has its eye pointed backward.

It is a great deal of medicine that possesses a child and robs it of all self-control.

Is it because a snake is biting a toad that one says the earth portends disaster?

The responsibility for trouble never fails to fall on the head of the tortoise.

Only huge problems befall the mahogany bean tree; only minor problems befall the baobab tree.

Problems have hardly any effect at all on the pumpkin shoot; broken off in the morning, it reappears the following night.

The problem posed by the banana tree is nothing that calls for a machete.

Words are what the child of the ear eats.

The matter in question is not overwhelming; it is the elaboration for it that is almost forbidding.

There matter pertaining to corn has a limit; life has its measure.

A lot of words will not fill a basket; it will only lead to lies.

A matter that is wrapped in gbòdògì leaves will, if wrapped in cocoyam leaves, rip them to tatters.

A matter that does not have a means to voice itself had better be silent.

The beauty bestowed by tattooing with the juice of the bùjé plant does not last nine days; a prostitute's beauty does not last more than a year.

One step after the other is the manner to walk through mire; one step after the other is how one walks through dust.

Your eyes are on the patriarch's hand, but they ignore his feet.

Expensive commodities come to the home; inexpensive ones go to the market.

76. Ọ̀bàrà is one of the minor chapters of Ifá called ọmọ Odù, (the children of Odù, the main corpus).  [Back to text]

77. Apart from its noisiness, it is not clear why the introduction of a gángan drum (the talking drum) into town would be disasterous. A suggestion is that the bearer carries the drum on his head to signal sorrow.  [Back to text]

78. The Yorùbá use the word ọ̀bọ, literally “monkey,” to designate fools.  [Back to text]

79. Cotton will not thrive in too wet a condition; but the avaricious farmer thinks the more moisture the better the yield.  [Back to text]

80. The morsel is obviously too big for him to swallow without pain or effort.  [Back to text]

81. The cat in the doorway is not paying attention to the mice inside the house; its attention is directed outside.  [Back to text]

82. Oṣé is the ritual rod Ṣàngó priests carry; it is reputed to have the power to invoke lightning. The name Bámgbóṣé means “Help me carry a ritual rod.”  [Back to text]

83. It is taboo for hunters to shoot at an ìrókò tree.  [Back to text]

84. The ìrókò tree is believed to house powerful spirits; any one who insults it is foolhardy.  [Back to text]

85. The child's real meaning is “Àkàrà méjì-méjì” (Bean fritters two at a time), and the rejoinder is, “Wọn ti ḿmú bẹ́ẹ̀ kó tó jí ì bá bá nílẹ̀?” (Had people been taking grabbing them like that, would he have found any left?). The child is using the sort of scrambled speech known as ẹnà.  [Back to text]

86. The second part is used as a proverb by itself.  [Back to text]

87. This proverb is based on the fact that alábaun (or àjàpá) the tortoise is the Yoruba trickster figure.  [Back to text]

88. The trunk of the banana plant is so soft that it does not take much effort to cut it down.  [Back to text]

89. Ọmọ etí, literally “the child of the ear,” refers here to the inner ear.  [Back to text]

90. Gbòdògì leaves are used for wrapping kola-nuts, and are therefore well regarded; cocoyam leaves are for all-purpose wrapping.  [Back to text]

91. The underlying story is that a man entertaining a guest sent his son out to go buy a goat to kill for the guest's dinner. He indicated the size of the goat by lifting his arm to the midpoint of his thigh, but at the same time he lifted his foot just slightly above the ground. The son returned with a rather small goat, and the guest wondered why he did not pay attention to his father's instructions. The son replied with the proverb.  [Back to text]