Part 5: On consistency; honesty, openness, plain speaking, reliability

Edot

The ẹgẹ́ trap never misses; whatever passes beneath it it strikes dead.

Ẹgbẹ̀tàlá: if one does not explain it, no one understands what it means.

You-have-not-seen-the-last-of-me, who sold his dog for twenty cowries.

Statements must be clarified; if they are not, they become muddy.

Statements must always be clarified; when a woman sits she covers her genitals with her wrapper.

It is a witness that clears up a case; a witness is not a partisan.

The ears of the king hear everything twice.

It is a person one does not love whose house is distant in one's estimation.

One wakes only those that sleep; one does not wake those pretending to sleep.

Whoever conceals a disease is beyond help from a doctor.

A person who is hit six times with a club and says only one blow landed; where did the other blows disappear to?

People chase only those who flee.

Whoever wants to be known as Ọ̀ṣákálá should be known as Ọ̀ṣákálá; whoever wants to be known as Òṣokolo should be known as Òṣokolo; what is the meaning of Ọ̀ṣákálá-ṣokolo?

Whoever knows what darkness can do must not antagonize the moon; one's actions “sometimes” send one abroad at night; roaming around in the dark is not a becoming habit.

The person who honors one in one's presence is nothing like the person who honors one in one's absence.

Whoever wishes to die a decent death, let him or her live decently.

The person who is asleep but spreads the word that he or she is dead, when he or she awakens whom will he or she tell?

The person who is wise and yet lies, the person who knows the truth and yet dissembles, the person who knows one has nothing and yet asks something of one, which is any good among the three?

The person who removes oil from the rafter is less a thief than the person who helps him set it on the floor.

When a person slips, the earth may not deny responsibility or knowledge.

The liar's mouth does not bleed.

His or her mouth is the same one that proposes two hundred and proposes three hundred.

Meat that one does not eat, one does not bite into allotments with one's teeth.

Deceit is no wisdom.

These beans are not delicious, these beans are not delicious, yet the coiffure at the occiput is shaking vigorously.

The pigeon says it cannot share its owner's food and drink, and then, when the day of his death arrives, duck its head.

14. Ẹgẹ́ is a trap made of sharp spikes, designed to impale from above whatever trips it.  [Back to text]

15. The word ẹgbẹ̀tàlá could be a contraction of either igba mẹ́tàlá (2,600) or ẹgbàá mẹ́tàlá (26,000).  [Back to text]

16. The second part about a woman's genitals is gratuitous flippancy; it takes advantage of the syllable là (in Ẹ̀là), which means “clarify,” and also denotes the action of passing one's loincloth between one's split thighs so as to cover one's genitalia.  [Back to text]