International African Institute

"Ork", Women and the Proliferation and Merging of "r"

Author(s): Karin Barber
Source: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 60, No. 3 (1990), pp. 313337
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute
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Africa 60 (3), 1990

ORIKI, WOMEN AND THE PROLIFIERATIONAND

MERGING OF ORISA
KarinBarber
1. TWO FACES OF YORUBA

RELIGION

The proliferation and overlapping of spiritual beings is a feature of many

religions. Saints in popular Catholicism and Vishnu's avatdrasin Hinduism
represent, in different ways, the possibility of spiritual beings that are
simultaneously one and many, clusters or series of manifestations whose
inner relationships are often not fully explained. Yoruba onis are in good
company. However, the way in which multiple aspects of gods are made and
maintained clearly varies from one religious repertoire to another. I suggest
that it is important to look at the means or medium by which fractions of gods
are established, in order to understand how the relationships between them
are conceived. Yoruba onrsdcan scarcely be apprehended without taking into
account the specific textuality of the oral genres through which they are
created, maintained and communicated with.
Yoruba religion has two faces. On one side, it can be seen as a teeming
array of colourful, strongly distinctive spiritual personalities. They fall into
recognisable categories: ions ('gods'), iwin ('spirits'), aldsekuior bkuzorun
('ancestors' or 'the dead', of which egutnguzn
masquerades are one manifestation), aje.('witches'), ile ('earth') and personified forces such as Iku ('death'),
Aruin('disease') and Ofo ('loss'). Orins, the subject of this discussion, can be a
combination, in varying proportions, of deified human hero, force of nature,
and a being of heavenly origin. Each one is assigned a definite personality.
They are differentiated in exuberant and lavish detail-in terms of dress,
food preferences, taboos, emblems, and special powers and fields of activity.
But the other side of the coin is a pervasive indeterminacy about their
identity. They appear to exist in multiple and reduplicated forms; to have
numerous manifestations; to overlap to the point where, as Bascom puts it, 'it
becomes difficult to say whether one is speaking of separate deities or simply
separate names or manifestations' (Bascom, 1969a: 82).' This multiplication
is attended by marked inconsistency in the accounts given of the charactersof
the nisd, their relations to other ori.s and even their gender. These
inconsistencies are found within a single town and even within a single cult
group. There are numerous cases of orisa said to be 'the same' and yet not
quite the same; orsa said by one devotee to be parent and child, by another to
be man and wife; orinssaid to be siblings or to be married to each other and
credited at one
yet at the same time to be 'no different from' each other; orinsd
moment with one set of characteristics and at another with a different and
apparently incompatible set.
In attempting to describe Yoruba religion, scholars have always had to
contend with this problem of untidiness. The overlapping and inconsistency
of Yoruba spiritual beings are so marked that few accounts have been able to
ignore them completely; some, like Beier (1956) and Thompson (1969), have
made them fully visible, though without attempting to account for the

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THE PROLIFERATION

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strength of their presence. In most work, however, the prevailing tendency

has been to emphasise the distinctive and individual side of ori.s. Fragmentation, multiplication and inconsistency have usually been overlooked, tidied
away or acknowledged only in passing: put down sometimes to error and
sometimes to regional cultural differences.2 The ambition of scholarly
accounts, with rare exceptions like Verger (1957) and McKenzie (1976), has
been to construct an emic or an etic model representing a consensual Yoruba
'cosmology', a map of the spiritual world which assigns to spiritual beings
determinate and permanent positions in a comprehensive scheme of things.
The principles according to which this distribution is made include hierarchical ranking (Olo6dmare and his 'ministers' in order of seniority or
importance, as described by Idowu (1962)), or the more complex and subtle
structure of categories proposed by Morton-Williams (1964); networks of
kinship and affinal relations among oris2 ('divine genealogies', as Bascom
puts it); classification in terms of the origins of spiritual beings (as in
Awolalu, 1979) or their moral disposition towards humans (as in Abimbola,
1976). In some cases, the attempt at schematic ordering gives way to mere
list-making, as if in acknowledgement of the impossibility of the task.
The tendency to emphasise the orderly at the expense of the dynamic has
been assisted by the almost universal use of it2n, narrativesor myths, as the
principal source of ideas about the oris2. The ittn lend themselves to the
classificatorycosmology-building project: they can be read as representations
of dramatic characters engaging in sequences of action, revealing their
personalities in the process and entering into relationships with other onsd
and spiritual beings of all kinds. Such characterscan be conceived of-indeed
are likely to be so conceived-as autonomous, distinctive entities, each
representing clearly defined symbolic values in a cosmic drama. This makes it
possible to envision a pantheon in which, ultimately, every character can be
assigned its own distinctive role, however multiplex and difficult to unravel
its relationships may be.' Oriki orisd, the 'praise poetry' attributed to the
gods, is cited, if at all, only as a supplement to the narrative. Quotations of
oriki are usually confined to a few phrases to make specific points already
given in the narrative or in the visual symbolism of the orisd. These phrases
are selected in such a way as to create the impression that each orisi has its
own clearly defined corpus of distinctive oriki which, used as an adjunct to
itin, may shed further light on the orisd'spersonality. Credence is placed in
this evidence because oriki are regarded as 'liturgies' (Idowu's word), sacred
texts which have been carefully preserved down the ages. It is significant that
Verger (1957) and McKenzie (1976), who give a more central place to oriki,
are the two scholars who arrive at the least hierarchically ordered and most
dynamic and fluid picture of the relations between spiritual beings, though
neither of them actually discusses any oriki text in detail.4 In most studies,
however, oriki are treated as if they participate in and supplement the
classificatoryor explicatory project which is attributed to itdn.
In my view, the relationship between oriki orisdand itdn ritsdis the other
way round. Oriki are the principal oral genre involved in the propitiation and
characterisation of orisa, and itdn participate in the mode of oriki. They
should be treated as an adjunct to orikirather than the reverse. This makes it
possible to understand characteristics of the itdn which have hitherto been

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THE PROLIFERATION

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dismissed as anomalies, the result of error, forgetfulness or noetic underdevelopment: for though each itdn is usually internally coherent, a collection
of itdn, told by different people or even by the same person, soon reveals
notable gaps, inconsistencies and contradictions. By considering itdn ori.sc
from the standpoint of the dominant genre, oriki, it becomes possible to see
why this is so, and how ittn do in fact make sense.
2. ORIKI IN THE PROPITIATION

OF ORISA

Oriki can be described as attributions or appellations: epithets, elaborated or

concise, which are addressed to a subject and which are equivalent to, or
alternatives to, names. All entities in existence are said to have their own
oriki. Oriki are felt to capture and evoke the essential characteristics of the
subject: to have the most profound and intimate access to its inner nature. In
utterance, therefore, they evoke the subject's power, arouse it to action, and
enhance its aura. They are always in the vocative case, and in utterance the
performer always establishes an intense, one-to-one bond with the addressee
as long as the utterance lasts.
Oriki are a labile and disjunctive textual form. Epithets are accumulated
over time; they are composed by different people, on different occasions, and
with reference to different experiences. Any subject's corpus of oriki is
therefore composed of a number of autonomous items. Furthermore, oriki
are often obscure, their meaning carried in a separate, parallel explanatory
tradition transmitted outside them. Each orikigestures away from its location
within the performed text to a hinterland of meaning outside the text. Not
only this, but each may lead to its own hinterland by a different route. Some
are literal, some ironical, some are specific historical references and some are
generalised comments referring to a timeless or ideal state of affairs. An oriki
chant is a shifting, fluctuating combination of fragments, which are linked
only tenuously and variably in performance, and which may take on different
meanings when differently combined.
Oriki are felt not only to encapsulate the essence of the subject, but also to
augment its presence in the social and natural world. Towns, lineages,
individual people, orisi, egungzn and even animals are enhanced in relation
to-sometimes almost at the expense of-other like entities through the
performance of their oriki. Enhancement is construed in terms of profusion.
The more orikia subject acquires, the greater its standing. The more epithets
a performer can find to heap on the subject's head the better. Performers
therefore raid the oriki corpuses of other subjects to find more material; they
may even raid other genres, such as Ifa verses, proverbs and riddles. When
an important man is being saluted, references to other people help to
augment his status, as 'father of, 'husband of or 'child of a wide network of
relatives. Genealogy is exploited to supply the performer with a source of
names with which to expand the aura of her chosen subject. A profusion of
people is attributed to the subject in a way that obscures and jumbles the
actual pattern of kinship and affinal ties in question, but which builds him up
by placing him at the centre of it.
Because the individual components of a corpus of orikiare autonomous and
self-contained, borrowing from it and incorporatingmaterial into it are easily

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THE PROLIFERATION

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accomplished. The oriki chant is fluid and without boundaries; the textual
items in any performance are united not by permanent internal semantic
links but by the fact of being applied to a single subject. The subject is the
only centre of the chant. The performancebuilds up this subject by directing
all available textual resources towards it. More units can be added by simple
aggregation, and become united with existing ones through a relationship of
equivalence. Thus, though oriki are felt to encapsulate the essence of the
subject, they are often borrowed and shared. This results in a kind of floating
and overlapping of identities. The result is paradoxical. The unique individual evoked by the intensely personal and intimate oriki is actually a
composite, who participates in others' identities, subsuming them into his
own but also lending (not consciously) parts of his own to others.
In Okuku where the research for this study was done,5as in other northern
Yoruba towns, the main responsibility for the orikitradition lies with women.
Though there are male specialists who perform chants based on oriki, the
principal and most ubiquitous tradition is the domestic one carried by the
wives and daughters of compounds, who are not entertainersand who do not
make money from their performances, but who are often recognised within
their compounds, and sometimes beyond, as experts. The most skilled
among them are called on at every household and town ceremonial to supply
the vital component of oriki chanting.
In the propitiation of orisa, as in other ceremonial and ritual activities, oriki
are indispensable. Oriki are performed at almost every ceremony concerning
orisd. They are uttered in the privacy of early-morning propitiation at the
devotee's own domestic shrine; in the regular weekly or monthly cult
meetings; and in the cult's annual festival, which may involve a great
set-piece, a theatrical event where the performance of oriki is a central
feature. In all these contexts, oriki constitute a channel of communication
between devotee and orisd through which reciprocal benefits flow. The
communication is opened by the making of an offering, and this is usually
supplemented by the utterance of prayers intended to direct a flow of
blessings towards the devotee. But it is in oriki that the relationship is most
fully realised as a living engagement between a speaker and a hearer. Like all
oriki, the oriki of orisdiare in the vocative case and presuppose a listening
subject. The ortis cannot but be there when the speaker exhorts and appeals
to it, extols it and insists on its attention in oriki. The devotee speaks her
mind to the orsd, in the process constituting its personality and powers in
their fullest form.
In present-day Okukiu, devotees, both male and female, often say they do
not know any itdn about theirorisd. The stories they do tell tend to be bald
statements, lacking the detail and liveliness of those recorded as little as thirty
years ago in other Yoruba towns. It seems likely that they have fallen victim
to the dramatic decline of traditional religion in the Yoruba-speaking area
during this period. But the oriki of orisd still flourish vigorously, in a vivid
abundance that makes them some of the most exciting poetry in the Yoruba
language. Devotees of Erinle, who could say next to nothing of their &risd's
'life story', beyond that he was a hunter and also a river, honoured him with
oriki of extraordinary vividness and profusion. In their performance, the
qualities and powers of the orisdemerged with a force and detail quite lacking

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THE PROLIFERATION

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in their narrative statements. Extraordinary performances of Sdng6 pipe

('calling Sang6'), Sbponntn pipe ('calling Soponnon') and dgbopipe ('calling
the herbal infusions', i.e. river deities) were a common occurrence in Okuku.
It seems, then that the crucial and fundamental role of oriki is gradually
being exposed to view as the religious practices are stripped down to their
bones. In the process, the central role of women, the principal carriers of
oriki, is thrown up to view. Though most cults contain prominent male
devotees, and though their past is described in terms of powerful men as well
as women, nowadays the responsibility for the continuation of the cults falls
more and more on women. I shall argue that this is because women are the
principal communicators, that they establish and create the orisd through
oriki, and that the fragmentation and merging of orisd cannot be properly
understood except through the specific disjunctive and labile textuality of
oriki.

3. INCONSISTENCY,

FRAGMENTATION

AND

MERGING

Inconsistency, fragmentation and merging of ions need to be treated not as

accidental and regrettable untidiness, but as central features of Yoruba
religious thought and practice. They are essential products of what I see as
the core relationship in this thought and practice: the intense, personal and
reciprocal bond between orinsand devotee. Although a devotee may participate, with differing degrees of involvement, in the service of more than one
onsd, it is usual for him or her to have a special relationship with only one.
While the larger civic and cultic organisation of religious practice is
important, it is this essentially private one-to-one relationship which is the
key to understanding orisd.
In a previous publication (Barber, 1981) I described this relationship as
being modelled on the relationship between the 'big man' and his supporter.
Scholarship has overlooked the fluidity and dynamism of human social
arrangements in Yorubaland as much as of spiritual ones. Big men were a
long-standing and central feature of Yoruba social process. Men (and more
rarely, women) made a place for themselves in society, operating within and
between the interstices of chiefly hierarchy, by recruiting supporters. A
supporter provides the big man with a following and thereby enhances his
reputation and influence; his enhanced reputation and influence in turn
enable the big man to protect and assist his supporters. The devotee,
similarly, supports his or her orisd with offerings, praises, feasts and lavish
expenditure, thus enhancing its capacity as well as its propensity to bestow
blessings and protection in return. If these are not forthcoming, the devotee
may threaten to transferhis or her allegiance to another oriss. By doing so, he
or she deprives the first one of some of its glory, for it is only as powerful as
its devotees make it. The relationship is summed up concisely in a phrase
found in the oriki of many orisd:
Eni '6 gbani lad gbd
It's the person who helps us that we help in return
Big men are by definition in competition with each other, for one big man can

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THE PROLIFERATION

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only increase his following at the expense of another. In the same way, the
orisdtogether with their cults may be seen as competing, each cult upholding
its own orins'sreputation at the expense of others'. As McKenzie noted, each
onsd is the centre of its own devotee's world, and is not subordinatedby them
to a scheme that includes all the other onsd.
Inconsistency, fragmentation and merging in the personalities of orisdare
products of this situation. Inconsistency, because the cults are in competition
and each presents its own onsd as the centre of its own world, ignoring others
or relegating them to subordinate positions. Fragmentation, because the
intense personal nature of the bond is enhanced if each devotee or small
group of devotees within a cult has its 'own' version of the nrisa. Merging,
because the exclusive character of the relationship means that each orns has
to be all things to its own devotees. All ron.s have to be able to offer similar
benefits and therefore have to share similar qualities: beneficence, in order to
bestow children, wealth and long life; and ferocity, in order to empower,
protect the devotee and destroy his or her enemies.
But the discussion of these features can be taken further if the role of oriki
is brought into consideration. Not only the reciprocal brisd-devotee relationship itself but the inconsistency, fragmentation and merging which issue
from it depend on and are constituted through oriki. Because of their lability
and disjunctiveness, oriki are able to bring certain intellectual operations to
fuller accomplishment than other discourses. Oriki are vehicles of transcendence. Their ability to float, to incorporate each other, to shift their shape
from performance to performance enable them to achieve a crossing of
boundaries, a simultaneous heightening and confluence of individual identities.

4.

ESTABLISHMENT

OF RECIPROCAL

BONDS

IN ORIKI

The utterance of oriki locks speaker and hearer in an exchange that is direct,
intimate and powerful. Even in the most public performancesthere is a sense
of a private communication between the performer and the onisa. Each
devotee speaks only of her own personal requests and her own relationship
with the orisd. She asks for blessings only for herself. Sometimes she makes
explicit the personal, confidential nature of the communication; she asks the
orisdto attend to her most private problems, ones which she will not speak of
outside her own room, but which the orisdis privy to:
Bdbd dgbd iwin ba n gbo tiyrdda mi
Bdba dgba bd n se eyi t6 sbro'be
Eyi t6 sorolemi inwi.
Venerable spirit, listen to the matters of my inner room
Venerable father, help me deal with the difficult ones among them
It's the difficult ones I'm talking about.
The relationship is conceived of as exclusive. Whatever the reality of multiple
inheritances and obligations, the devotee addresses the orisdas if she had no
other object of worship. She will often stress her single-minded devotion to

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THE PROLIFERATION

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319

one orisd. She may assert, more competitively, that her own orits is the only
spiritual force she can rely on, the benefits offered by others are inferior, and
she may insist that her orisd'sbeneficence should be reserved for an exclusive
circle of devotees and not just made available to anyone who asks for them.
The oriki chant expresses most fully the reciprocal nature of the orisddevotee bond because performing oriki is in itself the bestowal of a favour.
When a praise-singer addresses orikito a big man she both acknowledges and
augments his reputation, which is an essential component of his power. He
can be seen almost visibly swelling with gratification. The phrase used to
describe this translated state, 'Orii mi wu' (My head swelled) is the way that
the effects of an encounter with the supernaturalare described. Oriki, that is,
do not merely publicise a status achieved by other means; they are seen as an
instrument through which change of state and status are effected. Spiritual
beings are likewise enhanced by the performance of their oriki, and the
devotee is highly conscious of her own role in swelling the orisi's reputation.
If she ceases to perform them, the orisi's reputation declines.
But the empowering of spiritual beings through the performanceof orikiis
more dramatic than that of big men. During the biennial Egungun festival,
masqueradeswhose powers have become dormant are revived and galvanised
into furious activity by intensive and prolonged chanting of oriki. The dead
may be empowered to return to the community of the living by intensive
performance of their oriki at the grave-shrine. In the Sang6 festival, intensive
chanting of orikiarouses Sang6 and opens the way for him to enter the human
community by possessing his principal priest, who is similarly translated
from his normal state into a receptive trance by the steadily intensifying
chant.
The reciprocity of the relationship is expressed as automatic and instantaneous. In the very act of praising the orisd,the devotee enhances its capacity
to bless her. Conversely, it is said that because the maintenance and
augmentation of the orisi's name demands money and effort, therefore the
onisdwill bestow wealth and health on the devotee to enable her to perform
these services. Asserting that an orisi has the power to give becomes
tantamount to requesting a gift. The devotee makes an offering and demands
in oriki that the orisdsend a child-giver, a money-bringer, to collect it:
O16w6ol6moni o ydn '6 wdd gbodun
Enimojesini o ydn '6 wdd gbd
Abiyamo toyq gosuinlowo ni o yan k6 wad gbd
E e gbQdordngbarungbakoahrdiwo
Ogedeenimojesini o yn '6 waa gbebo lo
Esile waa gbebo, Og6ko babd ile Irest
Choose a wealth-bearer, child-bringer to come and fetch the festival offering
Choose a mother of toddlers to come and collect it
Choose a mother whose hand is dipped in camwood to come and collect it
You mustn't send a down-at-heel old palm-fruit gleaner
Choose only a mother of toddlers to come and take the offering away
Esile, come and take your offering, Og6ko father of Iresi town.
Oriki, then, constitute a channel between beings through which power and
benefits flow both ways.

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THE PROLIFERATION
5.

TRANSFERENCE

AND

SHARING

OF YORUBA GODS
OF QUALITIES

AMONG ORISSA

Since each devotee devotes her or himself to one orisd, each brisd has to
deliver the full range of blessings and protection. The ascription to each orisa
of the full range of attributes and powers is accomplished more comprehensively in oriki than in any other medium. Since oriki are aggregative,
incorporative, disjunctive and boundary-less, they permit a seamless borrowing of attributions. Since utterance is focused exclusively and intensively on a
single subject, who is the formal and emotional centre of the chant, there is
no necessity for, or indeed possibility of, justification of such borrowing in
narrativeterms. Borrowing, adapting and recycling textual elements learnt in
other contexts is part of the oriki performer's basic technique. On the one
hand each orisa is hailed by its devotees as unique, extraordinary and
distinctive, standing out amongst the others in its glory; on the other, there is
an effect almost of a composite identity woven of multiple strands, in which
each orisa participates.
The orisa are certainly differentiated in oriki. Soponnon, the god of
smallpox, and Sang6, the god of lightning, are evoked as gigantic and
terrifying figures commanding cosmic forces of sun and fire, ruthless and
implacable; while Osun and Otin are evoked as predominantly mild, cool
figures, associated with the child-giving and curative powers of water. What
is less well known is that in oriki Soponnon and Sang6 are also praised for
their curative powers and their ability to give children, while Osun, Otin and
Esile are also represented as tough, ferocious and dangerous. Each orisa is
credited with both sets of qualities, though in different proportions.
When devotees appeal to Soponnon, the killer deity, for children, they do
so in language that can also be found in agbo pipe, oriki addressed to the
predominantly beneficent water deities:
Erin a-t6-bd-jaye,tiw ni o samo6jutomi
Oisa t6fun leni n 6o weni somq
Elephant, one who is worthy to enjoy life with, it is you who are my guardian
The ortsd who gave me something extra will protect the extra until it grows up
into a child
Eni, the extra that a market woman adds to what she has sold someone, is
here being used to suggest that Soponnon gives even more children than
expected-he adds something to what was originally asked for. Sango can be
pictured, like Otin, Osun and other maternal deities, as a mother carrying
her devotee on her back, and can be begged, in the same words as are
addressed to them, not to let the devotee slip:
Qjd igbdai, a-j6-f6ib6, to qfi gbe mi pon mo mo tu
The baby-sash of safety, 'He who dances for the Europeans', which you tie
me to your back with, don't undo it.
Conversely, Osun and Otin, so often described as maternal, beautiful and
amiable, are also praised in frightening animal images shared with Sango and
.Sponnon. Qsun is
Eeguzin
gbadagba ti i gbe tt iji fon bi erin
Akeke orisia, Ij.esdOsore

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321

Mighty masqueradewhose way it is to trumpet on awakeninglike the

elephant
Scorpionornsa,Ij.es fromOsore
not to
andher devotee,like the Sang6and S6ponnondevotees,begs the onrisd
visit her ferocityon her:
ijesa mo fOsina mi, qmoQorlEfJon

Ijesawoman,don't strikeme with yourleft hand, childof Wealthat Efon.

(The suggestionis that a blow fromher left handwill be even morevicious
thanone fromher right.)
Esile, a 'white' deity linked with Qbatala, whose child-bringingand
curativepowersare symbolisedin the white cloth, metaland beadsused by
his devotees,is none the less creditedwith a ferocitythatis evokedin images
of blood so characteristicof the orikiof Ogun the god of war, iron and
hunting.He is
Onibdhte.eje

One who wearstrousersof blood

and
Olo6mi-nlie
, okuinrintokuinrin!
ofeje-dke-b.tjui

One who has waterin the house but washeshis face in the blood of a big
she-goat,a manwho reallyis a man!
It is not uncommonto findtwo or moreorisdsharingquiteextendedpassages
of oriki.Ojutu,one of the manifestationsof Erinle,is besoughtnot to attack
his devotee, who at the same time glories in his power to do harm. The
evocationin this passageof the ornsdstormingoff on warlikeexpeditionsall
overthe countryis found, in exactlythe samewords,in the orikiof Sang6.
MOse mi, omo elomii ni o se
Oits' ti i ba'nijd'm
'am
Ojutupinpinpinni t somoIdra

Bi 6 b jd, aayan lo bi Ede bi Ede

Bi Ejigbobi Ogb6mons.
Bi Akinmoo'nn
Bi Aawe'
Eso eso ni ifi i ba ni ja bi OtisaIrdwo.
Baba moiba n ja temi

. lem bi ejo,qoknrinpongbdbi enigbEisukal.

Don't attackme, attacksomeoneelse
The orisawho neverlets you knowwhen he's angrywith you
Ojutuitormentspeopleremorselessly
If he's going to fight, he stormsoff as far as Ede
As faras Ejigbo,as far as Ogb6moso
As faras Akinmoorin
As far as Aawe
Little by little he fightswith one, like the obrsdof Irawo
Father,don't pick on me to fightwith

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You chase people like snakes, stout fellow like someone who could lift up Esu
and dump him down.
Attempts that have been made in the literatureto discover links and polarities
between the orisd, seen as a system, have not sufficiently taken into account
the general tendency for oriki of orisd to be shared. Even when the oriki are
distinct and ascribed to only one orisi, the idiom in which they are framed
often turns out to be an allotropic variant of orikiattributed to other orisd.An
example is the idiom which construes power as outrage. This is a highly
characteristic idiom and many orisd are credited with some shocking act as
demonstration of their capacity to transcend normal expectations and get
away with it. Orisa Ogiyian(another variant of Obatala) pokes his in-laws in
the eye with a sharpened stick and then plunges them into boiling oil; Sang6
shows his ingratitude by cooking and eating the yam cuttings kindly given to
him by a neighbour for replanting; Soponnon not only steals a goat but
compels its owner to grind the pepper to cook it in; and several of the
manifestations of Erinle, which are discussed in detail below, have their own
outrages, from refusing to answer friendly greetings to bashing an elderly
widow on the head. The vast, boundary-less reservoir of textual materials
from which oriki are constructed permits an indefinite number of variations
on a theme.

6. CONSTITUTION

OF ORISA MANIFESTATIONS

IN ORIKI

The proliferation of ions manifestations may be conceived in several ways

and may come about through different processes, but in all, oriki are central
and attention to the textual mode of oriki sheds light on the significance of
these multiple personalities. Oriki, to simplify, constitute orisdmanifestations
in two ways: through the separate oriki of the devotees with whom each
fragment is identified, and through the attribution to each fragment of its
own, recognisable oriki-for although epithets can be borrowed, some do
remain the distinctive property of particularbeings.
In Okukiualmost all orisdexist in more than one manifestation.7In some
cases the tendency to fragmentation is given formal expression in the
mythology, where it is asserted, for example, that there are 'seven Oguns',
each belonging to a different body of devotees; and where Oya's oriki
'Iyanisan-an'is explained with an account of how and why she split into nine
parts. But in Okukiu at least, the multiplication of orisd personalities is
usually left unexplained and unenumerated. It is taken for granted that one
person's Qya is different from another's. No fixed total of variants is given
because their emergence is seen as part of a historical process. Some have
been abandoned, new ones could still be created.
Sometimes the differentiation is exogenous: the variants have separate
origins, having been brought into the community at different times and from
different towns. Orisa Oko, the farm deity, for example, exists in two
different forms, one represented by an iron staff and propitiated by el.fun,
wearers of chalk markings, and the other known as Arere and represented by
a crown of cowries. The first was brought to Okukiufrom Irawo by a barren
woman who successfully solicited a child from the orisd, and the second was

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broughtfrom Sao, near Ilorin, by a man who was afflictedby born-to-die

children.It was explainedthat 'Both are OrisaOko.' Some said that Arere
wasOrisaOko's'wife',but the iya Alareredeniedthis, 'OrisaOkokanndani'
('It's the sameOrisaOko'). Moreoften, however,the processof differentiation is motivatedfromwithinthe cult. A strongdevoteewho makeshis or her
presencefelt in the communitymaysucceedin stampingthe ions with his or
her identity. There is, for example, a Sang6 known as Sang6 Adegbite
('Adegbite'sSang6'),and anotherknown as Sangoti Sang6loll('the Sango
BothAdegbiteand Sangolo6
a wereformidablemale
belongingto Sang61old').
who werespectacularlypossessedby the orinsat the
priestsof the cult, adosu8
annualfestival,and who gave greatfeasts. It was theirsaliencein the life of
the townandof the cult whichgavetheirSang6sa distinctiveidentity.These
two Sang6swere consideredto be distinctin the same sense that Banyanni
('Sango'selder sister')and Mogba('the most seniorof all the Sang6s')are
distinct. 'All of them are Sang6',it would be said, 'and all of us are Sang6
devotees'.
In otherwords,the exclusiveand intensiverelationshipbetweenorisdand
devoteeis expressedas mutualidentification.The devoteeidentifieswith the
oriscand is identifiedby her devotionto it (a woman,for instance,may be
knownby no othernamethanIyadSngo); and onsd,in turn, is identifiedin
terms of the devotee who boosts its reputation(as in the case of Sang6
Eachof the numerousSangos,Oyasand
Adegbiteand $ang6ti $ang61olQ).
Qsunsis recognisedby virtueof its relationshipwith a particulardevoteeor
groupof devotees.This identificationis achievedaboveall throughoriki.
The Erinlecult illustrateshow the processworks.The multiplepersonalities of this river deity were conceivedas 'ibu', pools in the river. At cult
meetingsand festivals,devoteeswouldchantorikiwhichsalutedand evoked
the collectivityof ibuwith the refrain:
Enibtumbui,
ol6do-odb,ol6mi-omi

All you pools, all you rivers,all you waters

and then the ibu would be namedand salutedone by one. They included
Alamo (potter), Abatan(swamp),Agana, Igberi, Akanbi(a man's name),
Aanu (pity), Iya Mokin (mother of Mbkin), Ojuitiu(peace of mind) and
OwaalaIf6n (Owaalaof Ifon, a town). Some of these fractionsare widely
knownoutsideOkukui,9
but even so, they are regardedamongstthe Okukii
devoteesas havingarisenthroughan internalprocessof mutualidentification
betweenorinsand devotee. Ojutiuwas one of the ibu known in Egbadoby
Thompson's informants(Thompson, 1969), but this is how an Okukiu
devoteeexplainedits originto me:
'Ojutuibegan when Oguinsolaof ile Oluiode[grandfatherof present
generationof eldersin this compound]got a childfromErinleandsaid"O
tuimi loju"[i.e. my mindis set at rest]. "Ojutui"
[restof mind]wasa name
alreadyknownto people,but he gaveit to his own Erinlewhenhe got the
long-desiredchild.'
She added:
'We all worshipErinleat the samespot when we go to the river.The ibut

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[pools] don't actually exist as physical locations. They are names. Everyone who worships Erinle has a particularibuz.If you get your Erinle from
your father or mother, you take over the name of the ibutthat they had.'
These 'names' are used amongst cult members as a way of tightening the
identification between each devotee and his or her onis. The cult members
address each other not by their own personal names but by the name of the
ibiuof each one. As one devotee put it:
'The name of the ibu is an orakofddri for the devotee [i.e., an honorary
name used for self-display]. The names are a way of distinguishing the
devotees.'
The orins, in turn, is apprehended in the form of ibu which exist only by
virtue of their association with small groups or individuals. The 'name', then,
is the point of conjunction between the two. But naming only reaches its full
potential in oriki, which are both equivalents to, and enormous elaborations
of, personal names.
The devotee can be saluted through the oriki of the ionsd, and the onsa
through the oriki of the devotee. The inclusion of the devotee's oriki in orisd
pipt is one of the ways in which manifestations of ionsaare differentiated from
each other. Among, the ibu of Erinle, Iya Mokin is saluted by the oriki orile
(lineage oriki) of Ik6yi, Qwaala by those of Ifon, Ibu Aanui by those
of Opomulero. In passages like the following one, the devotee makes it clear
that she is transferringthe orikioril?of a prominent devotee to his or her ibu,
by reminding the listeners that 'it's Ibu Aanu I'm saluting like that':
Awon nIware Opo, M.oj-Alekan
A-meru-rele
IbuzAnui ni mo ki bdun
A-menr-rele,Eniwa lOyun
Omo ard gbo mi Idso
Odu a-yi-kanle-bi-oke
Qmo po6korobiti
Ibu Aanu ni mo wa, n o lo
Qmo bp6 korobiti.
They are the Iware Op6, Moja-Alekan
One who brings a slave home
It's AanuiPool I'm saluting like this
One who brings a slave home, Eniwa has Oyun
Child of 'My clothes are worn out'
Rotund fellow who rolls along mountainously
Child of the roly poly post
I'm still on AanuiPool, I haven't left it
Child of the roly poly post.
Op6 (post) is the emblem of the people claiming origin in Iwata--in Okukiu,
members of the compound known as ile Oloko-and the oriki orile revolve
around this theme, functioning as an emblem of group identity. The
principal devotee of ibui Aanu belonged to ile Olo0koand the orki were
transferred to this fraction of the orins. Conversely, the devotees are saluted

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by the orikiof the orisa. As the Erinle devotees entered the cult meeting place
on one occasion, one of them chanted:
Ago enile o, oloj nib. o
El ni.
olojb Qmo
Oloj6 miii koQ,
Bi enile ba ga t6 bd tein
Emi ilejbbi mo bd mo bi eliri
Mo sebi enile n ni 6 salejoni 'Mo' rQra'
Enile se mi pele Olojbntb
Mo rib2 nwdju mo rib2 lyin
Aldroku
Eyibtunmi
Sdbd saba ogogoak.er okiun
Ta 16lori dwon wonhun?
Aldmo16oori 2won wonhun
Akq omi ti ijergbddgi
Ajdariwa ateyin orungefon
Fdiiddrosumi elui
O fdij.pd 6 sumi e ni sdgidi
Abaldr6 barowo kdldro6 bu 'ekutn!
Permission to enter, houseowner, a mighty person is on the way
It's no other mighty person than the mighty child of Enle
If the householder is as tall as an elephant
If I the visitor am no bigger than a tiny mouse
Still I think the householder will get up to welcome the visitor
Houseowner, say I am welcome, the mighty person is on her way
I pay homage to all
Alarokui
Eyl'bunmi
Plentiful are the true sons of the 'akere okin' line
Who is the owner of the Ori of these people?
Alamo [an ibu] is the owner of the Ori of these people
Masterful water whose name is Gbaagi [nickname for a bossy person]
Dog of Eruwa who mounts a buffalo from the back of its neck
One who shits indigo without being a dyer
He shits showers of little round turds without eating groundnuts
One who visits the dyer to look at the indigo and makes the dyer burst into
tears! [because he helps himself]
The singer announces herself, on arrival, as a 'mighty person'-mighty
because she is 'the child of Erinle'. She goes on to salute two of the great
Erinle devotees of the past, now dead, and having named them, she asks
'Who is the owner of their Or?' i.e. who was in charge of apportioning to
them the good things of life? The answer is Alamo, one of the ibu. She then
chants the orikiof Alam,mthe 'masterful water', associated with the deep blue
of indigo dye and with extraordinary powers and energies and excessive
behaviour. Those whose Or he is in charge of participate in these powers and
energies. They are enhanced through their association with him. The
references to the ori.s thus enhance the standing of the devotee.

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As well as being saluted through its devotee's oriki, then, each ibu has its
own oriki. Each, in fact, has a personality that is expressed only in oriki, for
there are no stories and no visual symbolism or rituals to suggest the
differences.'0At the cult meeting already referred to, the performer saluted
each ibu in turn and the oriki for each were subtly different. All dwelt on a
certain cluster of characteristicsassociated with Erinle as a water and hunting
deity. All emphasised his 'toughness', his outrageous acts, his capacity to
torment or his propensity for dealing sudden, unsuspected attacks. All these
are qualities which make him a good protector and ally for his devotees. But
the emphasis differed from one ibu to another. The performance was like a
shifting kaleidoscope of perspectives, in which distinct but consonant and
equivalent repertoires of imagery came sequentially into view. Alamo,
associated with indigo dye and inky blackness ('My father looked at his own
hair, it was jet black!') is evoked entirely in terms of the river-the deep
turbulent pools which make him 'ako omi' ('virile water'). His outrageous act
consists of beating up an old widow to whom he owes money for drink:
Sd ponp6 topo
Fdtari opo ndpo
O wad roti l6 opo
Ldwin, ee san!
Stands over the widow with a cudgel
Knocks the widow's head against the housepost
He went and bought drinks from a widow
On credit, he didn't pay!
Igberi is linked with iron and Ogun, as befits a hunter deity, and his
outrageous act is to cut up the blacksmith's tools (or the warrior'sweapons)
before his very eyes and eat them:
Igberi Ogun, akel.wonjdfa
Qko iyd mi akerinje lo6j enrinn!
Igberi Ogun, one who cuts the chain with a single stroke
My mother's husband, one who cuts iron and eats it in front of the iron's
owner!
Ojiutuiis even more definitely a hunter:
O-peyQIl-ti-eyqlI
Ara odb ti i r6 cjo igi ldso
O pesuo igbo tibi-tiran
Oko Fdtzinnse

tole-tol
o pekuzlu

0 pagb.nrin nipa esin

Ojuitfio kd tintineye mor'igi
One who kills lynx after lynx
Native of the river who dresses the concourse of trees in cloth
He kills the red-flanked duiker in the forest, and all its family and line
Husband of Fatuinnse
He kills the crested duiker and its children yet unborn

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He kills the antelope with laughable ease

Ojuitu,you corner the little birds on top of the tree.
Iya Mokin is a female fraction of the male hunter deity. She is credited with
medicinal and magical powers which give her control over both animals and
humans:
Iya Mokin aldppafonere
A-rile-yan-si
Olode okuita
A-boke-die-soogun
Ere 16tetepadie Mokin
Iydmopowad pere dina oko
Ard oko o ro6n wale
Ara'ile o rondroko
Ebe laa be Mokin k6 t6 ba a gberel6on
Iya Mokin, one who kills a python instantly
One who has a house to swagger in
One whose forecourt is made of stone
One who takes a little earth from the hill to make medicine
The python quickly killed Mokin's hen
Iyam'op went and killed the python and blocked the road to the farm with it
People coming from the farm couldn't get past to their homes
People coming from home couldn't get past to their farms
We had to beg Mokin before she removed the python from the road for us.
Owaala Ifon brings in a different range of concepts altogether. Although its
last devotee is now dead, and there was no one to take it over, the ibiuis still
saluted at cult meetings along with the others. This manifestation seems to
have some of the characteristics of Orisa Oluf6n, a variant of Obatatla.Its
name suggests they have a common origin in Ifon. Whereas the other
manifestations are described as indigo, black and red in appearance and in
their clothing, Qwaala Ifon, like Obatala, is white. He has aspects of the
creator deity, and like him is associated with cripples and albinos. His food,
like that of other 'white' deities, is snails. Owaala Ifon seems very different
from all the other ibuz:emphasising peaceable, creative and curative properties rather than dangerous ones. He is pictured as a benign provider of
children. In this way a desirable balance within the cult as a whole is attained.
But, as with other 'white' dieties, his beneficence has a dangerous side and,
like the other ibui,he can use his powers for vicious purposes:
Qwddld Ifon, a-wemo-bi-ql.ijd
DLurosigi-bwu
Qwdald ti i romoldpdajq bi agogo
Oriri oitsdti iwzumol.eke obntui
Baba mo wiuun leekeemi, 'mo a-tzin-'Fon-se.
Owaala of Ifon, one who gives us fine children as God does
One who stands upright like the cotton-bush
Owaala who forges children's arms one after another like bells
Oriri Orisa who swells a person's cheeks up puffily [with illness]
Father don't swell my cheeks up, child of one who brings prosperity to Ifon.

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Through oriki, then, the various manifestations of an brisa are evoked and
filled out with attributes. The degree to which these manifestations are
distinct varies from cult to cult. Among the ibuzof ErinlI which I have used as
an example, the orikievoke with fine variationsof imagery a series of fractions
of a personality, all sharing certain characteristics but offering variant
expressions of them. The different manifestations are not ranked, nor are
their interrelationshipstheorised." Some manifestations, however, are said to
be more 'powerful' than others; some are acknowledged as the 'olor6 or
leader. If fractions or orisaare more powerful than each other, this is because
their devotees have been able to make them so.
Thus oriki simultaneously differentiate personalities and dissolve the
boundaries between them, and these two processes are interlocked. They
differentiate each orisa and each orisd fraction by focusing exclusively on it
and asserting its unique merits, and by infusing it with the orikiof its 'owner'.
But in building up one subject, dissolution of boundaries takes place when
the oriki draw on images and themes that have been attributed to others,
either by borrowing or by allotropic variation. Not only the boundaries
between one orisa and another, but also the boundaries between brisd and
devotee are dissolved in the transference of oriki. In looking at a single
performance or single corpus, it is never possible to tell which epithets
discriminate a being and which are shared with other beings, part of a larger,
composite repertoire of shared attributes. Only a wider survey of oriki oriisa
reveals the interplay of differentiation and merging. However, to the devotee,
focused on her own orisd, this does not present itself as an issue.
7.

WOMEN

AND

THE CULTS

It is appropriatethat orikiin Okukuiare primarilymastered and performed by

women, for women are one of the principal sources both of social differentiation and of social linking in northern Yoruba towns. Within an ile (lineage/
compound), co-wives constitute the genealogical nodes according to which
groups of men are divided for purposes of inheritance and political segmentation. They introduce heterogeneity into the patrilineage by giving each
individual man a separate body of affines which can be called upon as a
supplementary and alternative network of support. But on marriagewomen
also link whole lineages, their fathers' and their husbands', breaching the
boundaries set up by the ideology of lineage difference and autonomy. In
orisacults, women multiply the diversity of spiritual beings that are served in
each lineage and in the town as a whole. On marriage, they often bring with
them their own orist which they have become attached to in their natal
lineage or town. After their death, someone else must take it over, perpetuating its presence indefinitely. Since orisd themselves and a devotee's 'place' in
the cult have usually been passed down through women as well as menoften zigzagging from mother to son to son's daughter-orisa and cult places
have passed between compounds, ensuring that no ile has a homogeneous
religious composition.
Women themselves, then, effect both division and transcendence of
division among social groups, just as orikiboth dissolve and assert difference.
My suggestion here is that women have been important in the cults at least

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partly because it is they who control the vital channels of communication

with the ori.sdthrough their mastery of orik. Rather than being the subject of
the 'praise' which puts big men in the limelight," they actually operate the
'praising' mechanism by which the flow of spiritual forces is directed and
through which, ultimately, the multiple personalities of the ron.sare constituted.
An Erinle chant corroborates the supposition that what is inherited in the
cult is not so much title or a formal position defined in terms of rights and
duties, as a capability. Ere-Osun inherited what may be termed her Erinle
from her mother's mother Aw6roka, whom she saluted in the following
terms:
Aworoka ni n ki un
Ots ti ntbe l6riAw6rokdni ni ki un
0lor1 enimojeOsi

Awon16k6 n lEnlenie omi

Awon .gd oniworooguno o o
Awon nda 16ko mi ni orokoto
0 wad deni

6 defi
Odeta
Qgd oniworoogunti nibe lOye-moko
Nlie Kookin
Ayabui1.na tero
Adebinpe
Altnrtiuruiorin lenu
Pdakda botebo6t
Adebinpeal6nirtiuruorin lenu
Awon 16ko mi niwooroogunn o ni i sise
Mo kerennu oniworooguno
Awon nda 16ran n lode n 6 ni i .sde lo.
Aw6roka is the one I am saluting
It's the onri.s upon Aworoka's head [i.e. that devolved upon her] that I am
saluting
Head of all the lesser cult members
It was she who taught me about Erinle at the bottom of the water
She, the master of the praise-singers
It was she who imparted to me the gift of the gab
There was one
There were two
There were three
Masters of praise-singing at Oye-moko
In the town of Kookin
Where travellers stop to drink
Adebinpe
One who has all kinds of songs on her lips
Little masquerade that frays its lips with talking!
Adebinpe, one who has all kinds of songs on her lips
She was the one who taught me praise-singing, I will not make any mistakes

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I am small among the praise-singers

It was they who sent me out, I will not make any mistakes in my outing.
Aw6roka, a former devotee of the cult, now dead, is saluted in conjunction
with her Erinle which, it is explicitly stated, was 'on her head', i.e. devolved
upon her from some even earlier member of the cult. Awor9ka was keeping
open a place in the cult, a place now occupied by someone else. It is not just a
slot in the cult membership that Aw6roka left behind to be filled, but a
relationship with the spiritual world-a relationship which her successor has
a duty to maintain. Aw6roka is remembered, above all, for her gifts as a
praise-singer. She is not just a matriarchalfigure in the cult (olorionimojesiliterally the head of all the mothers of toddlers, i.e. other female cult
members); she is also .gd oniwbrbbgun,the master of the vocalists. Ere-Osun
acknowledges Aworoka as the one from whom she has inherited a place: a
place defined by competence in the performanceof oriki. She pays tribute by
saying that Awor9kaitaught her everything, and that she herself is a novice. It
is only by the good will and protective beneficence of Aworoka and the other
expert vocalists of former times (she prepares at one point to name two
others, but does not do so) that she can carry out her assignment without
mishap. It is common in oriki performances for the performer briefly to
acknowledge his or her teacher, but this text goes further than that. It
suggests that the key figures in the cult are conceived of in terms of great
chanters. The past of the Erinle devotees, that is, is seen as the transmission
not so much of title or office but of a capacity to communicate. The great
devotees are those who can best cross boundaries between mortal beings and
spiritual ones.
8. ITAN ORISA RECONSIDERED

The narratives about orisa, on which almost all accounts of Yoruba religion
have been based, do not participate in the constitution of the intense,
vocative relationship between devotee and orisa. They are not involved,
therefore, in the actual constitution of orisafragments. However, like the itdn
existing in parallel with other kinds of oriki, they supply an important and
complementary gloss, a narrativeframework without which the construction
of orisa personalities might perhaps dissolve into complete liquidity. Inasmuch as narratives automatically invest personalities with definition as
agents, and relate them in sequences of action to other agents, itdn orisd
produce a larger pattern between spiritual entities, which oriki do not:
something that could be, and has been, construed as a cosmological map.
This role of itcn is undeniably important, providing a set of parameters
within which the construction of orisa identities take place.
What I want to suggest, however, is that in so far as itdn appear garbled
and contradictory, this is to be understood in terms of the discursive forms of
oriki. In itdn orisa, devotees either ignore the other orisa, saying they are no
concern of theirs, or they tell stories which attempt to enhance their own orisd
through its associations with others. Thus each self-centric cult produces its
own version of cosmological relationships, drawing on the same themes and
narrativedevices as others but producing markedly different effects. Here is

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an example, Qsun, Oya, Otin, Erinle and L66gun-ede are all river deities
with cults in Okukiu. Devotees of both Qya and Osun said that these two
deities were the wives of Sang6. The Osun devotee said that Osun was the
younger and more beautiful of the two, and as junior wife stole all Sango's
affection. The Oya devotee, however, said that Osun was the senior wife, but
Oya was so much more strong-willed that she gained complete ascendancy
over her and became Sang6's favourite. A devotee of Erinle, the river-hunter
deity, on the other hand, appropriatedOsun, together with Otin, as wives for
Erinle, thus annexing the prestige of the big cults of these two deities to the
lesser-known and smaller Erinle cult. Otin devotees did not agree that Otin
was Erinle's wife. They told a story representing Otin as the wife of an Oba of
Otan, who betrayed her secret (that she had four breasts) thus driving her to
turn into a river. In the context of the annual Otin festival, however, Otin
devotees said Otin's husband was Otonmporo,one of the many masks brought
out during the festival-a particularly fierce and masculine mask often
described as an egutnguzn.
Inconsistencies in stories told even by members of a single cult suggest that
the overriding concern is with providing the ronsi with a set of auspicious
relationships rather than with constructing a consensual explanatory cosmology. As long as the proposed relationships put the orisd in a favourable
position, the details seem not to matter very much. The Baale Sang6, for
instance, a senior male title-holder in the Sango cult, said that Yemoja was
Sang6's mother, and added that his father was Awoyo, a native of Oyo (but
remarked at another point that his father was Oranmiyan); but the head of
the Sango cult, Ona Mogba, asserted that 'Yemoja was Sang6's elder sister,
Soponnon was his younger brother, and his father was QOlrun.'Both aligned
Yem9ja, a powerful and important deity, with Sang6 to surround him with a
strong supporting cast: the details of her relationship to him were, however,
open to a variety of rearrangements.The appropriationof Soponnon, one of
the most feared of all ornsa, as a junior brother to Sango, similarly served the
dual purpose of announcing the superiority and dominance of Sang6 even
over this orisd ('No one can fight with Soponnon because they fear Sang6's
wrath'), and annexing the prestige of Soponnon to Sang6. Kinship and
marriagerelations are supplemented by claims of friendship among the onsa.
The custodians of the Oba's eguzngtinPaje say that 'Soponnon and Paje walk
together [i.e. are companions] because they are both very powerful and
dangerous. If Soponnon is threatening to kill the children of a certain family,
Paje can be sent to him to beg him to desist.' Paje enjoys an increase of
reputation through his friendship with and influence over Soponnon. A small
cult can give its orisda boost by claiming that it has the protection of a more
powerful one. Thus Banyanni, the deity of people born with dreadlocks, was
described by one devotee as the elder sister of Sango: 'Dada [Banyanni]
cannot fight, but she has a younger brother who is very brave.' Another
devotee (Qna Mogba again) said that Banyanni was actually Sango's senior
wife, while Oya was the junior. What was important was that Banyanni
should be linked to Sang6 in a way that put her under his protection.
As in oriki, itdn told in each cult seek to heighten the powers and qualities
of the cult's own oi.nsd,attributing to them the full range from beneficence to
ferocity. This leads to thematic differences between one cult's characterisa-

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tion and another's. A devotee of Oya told a story which stressed the ferocity
of Oya by contrasting it with the meekness of her co-wife Osun:
'Osun was the senior wife, Oya the junior. Oya was very beautiful, given
to dressing up and showing off. She didn't do her share of the housework.
She was lazy, bossy, violent and unco-operative, and just sat there
beautifying herself while her senior wife did all the work. Osun was mild
and peaceable; she turned the other cheek to every insult and advised
everyone to leave Oya alone. Osun said if Oya couldn't be bothered to
grind the pepper, she would do it herself. If Oya said she wouldn't draw
water, Osun would run and do it. Osun would say, "Just sit down and
rest." Oya would sit there smirking and preening herself.'
Osun is here represented as mild, patient and kind-hearted, easily overborne
by the more forceful character of her co-wife. This is a picture of Osun
presented in many itdn. But her own devotees tended to stress the opposite
view of her personality. Baale Osun, the head of the Osun cult, told the
following story to illustrate her powers:
'In the ancient times all the orisa made a plan to get wealthy. They
prepared a certain medicine which, if planted in yam-heaps, would
produce money, children and all the things they wanted in life. In those
days Osun was the only woman, and all the big nrisd-Oguin, $ango,
Soponnon-decided, despite Ifa's advice to the contrary, to keep her out
of the plan. They held their meetings in secret. But Osun overheard them.
She was furious, and decided to get her revenge. After they had dug the
heaps and planted the medicine, she crept out at dead of night and
sprinkled some of her river water on the heaps. The next day the other
orisacame out full of joyous anticipation to dig up all the good things from
the heaps, but they found nothing there. They tried again the following
day: again Osun neutralised their medicine. Finally they decided to take
Ifa's advice and invite Osun to join their scheme. They dug the heaps
again, put in the medicine, and the next day they were all blessed with
untold riches.'
Although Baale Osun is also an Ifa priest, as is evident from the positioning of
Ifa as narrative fulcrum in this story (see Barber, 1990), and although Ifa
priests, alone among traditional Yoruba worshippers, are committed to the
exposition of an overall cosmological scheme, nevertheless he is distinctly
partisan in his treatment of Osun. He concludes the story with the comment,
'Osun is a woman like a man: no one can get away with provoking her.'
The Oya devotees take the aggrandisementof their own orisaeven further,
boasting of her powers to the point of making her encroach on Sang6's
personal domain, the control of lightning:
'... if her husband was going anywhere, she'd tighten her sash like
this-[Question: And follow him?] She'd go in front! She'd go rushing
ahead. She was light-complexioned, she'd go in front, she'd be the one to
burn up houses first, she'd cover the houses in flames, before her husband
arrived! She'd throw her weight about. When her husband arrived she'd
unleash sheets of flames.'

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333

The discrepancies between different accounts of the orinsare not perceived

as disagreement, for the devotees of different cults are not interested in
comparing notes, let alone in synthesising disparate elements of narrative.
Though creative imagination and intellectual ingenuity go into the construction of an itdn rinsa,its intent is not to map the universe but to enhance the
standing of one subject. The narrativeworks like orikiin assembling around a
central figure a cluster of names and qualities so as to reflect credit on it. The
relationships that are put forward in itdn as links between the oris, whether
of kinship, marriage or friendship, should not be regarded as the glue that
holds together an enduring family pantheon. They are better seen as the lines
along which fields of force are laid out. Each orisd is like a magnet which
aligns cosmological elements, like iron filings, so that all point in its own
direction. Some orinsare more powerful magnets than others; but all are of
limited strength, so that large portions of the field, for every cult, are simply
left out, unmentioned by the devotees of that orisd.
The variations in ittin orisd, then, are not a mere garbling resulting from
decline in the tradition-though it is certainly true that this decline may have
removed constraints on certain operations. Similar variation, contradiction
and indeterminacy in itdn is noted by late nineteenth-century and early
twentieth-century sources. A. B. Ellis tries to unite a large proportion of the
orisa under a single scheme, based on common, multiple birth from
incestuously impregnated Yemoja. But he goes on to acknowledge that this
scheme is not universally accepted in its entirety.
Shango,for example,is said by some to be of independentorigin, like Ifa; and
Odudua,the motherof Yemaja,accordingto the myth,is by othersincludedin the
numberof thosewhosprangfromYemaja'sbody.No generalconsensusof opinion
has yet beenarrivedat. [Ellis, 1894:88]
Dennett (1910: 124) quotes an Egba man to the effect that 'The natives say
that Oshowsi is Ogun's wife, but this is not so, they were both the sons of one
father', and cites variant and incompatible stories about Sango. Farrow, more
openly than most commentators, acknowledges his own synthesising role in
the construction of a Yoruba pantheon, saying that he gathered his information from:
a verylargenumberof nativewitnesses,veryfew of whompresentedto me all the
same ideas. Any one else, inquiringof other nativesin other places, would not
find, as held by everyone of them, all that I haverecorded,but partsof all these
separateideas will be found held by separateindividualseverywhere.[Farrow
1926:3]
His explanation for this diversity and inconsistency of opinion is the Yoruba
tendency to subterfuge-added to the desire to please and the desire to
mystify.
These views, expressed as they were in the language of ethnocentric
condescension, and revealing careless ignorance of detail (in a single chapter,
Ellis gets twelve out of seventeen purported etymological explanations
wrong) added, for Yoruba scholars, a sharper incentive to the general
anthropological commitment to the discovery of a unified belief system for
every culture. Lucas, for instance, expresses indignation at Farrow's account

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of Yoruba inconsistency, and goes on simply to deny it (Lucas, 1948).

Numerous conflicting hierarchies ofobnsi have since been set out; numerous
ingenious resolutions have been proposed to questions that devotees would
never ask. The devotees' own approach is, in my view, both more complex
and more subtle. I do not think, as Louis Brenner does (Brenner, 1989), that
the variation and inconsistency in their accounts are the result of mere
indifference to intellectual questions, resulting from the overriding importance of emotional or bodily expression of religious experience. Ifa, the most
fully articulated Yoruba intellectual system, is inspired by precisely the same
impulse as the other cults to concentrate its resources on the enhancement of
its own rnsd: it is just that Ifi is that much more successful and
comprehensive.14In Yoruba cults, I do not think it is possible to separate
emotion and intellect. Orisddevotees are highly ingenious at recruiting ideas,
from a large and heterogeneous field of resources, to serve their own
expressive and emotional purposes. In the process, they propose a sophisticated picture of how an individual personality is constituted out of multiple
personalities of others, and how it in turn infuses new elements into the
shared repertoire. They represent in paradigmaticform, in the vivid dyadic
bond between performer of oriki and addressee, the dialogic constitution of
human and spiritual worlds.
NOTES
1

Bascom is referring specifically to Obatala and other 'white' deities, but his phrase is apt for
most of the nisd that had cults in Okuku where this study was based.
2 The latter is of course an
important factor, but it cannot account for inconsistencies found
within a single community. Lucas (1948) aligns all his evidence to demonstrate a single
monolithic system derived from acient Egypt. Abimbola (1976) tends to ignore discrepancies in
the interests of constructing a single authoritative though flexible 'belief system', derived from
the Ifi corpus. Idowu (1962) recognises inconsistencies as a 'problem' which has to be 'resolved'
by adducing evidence in favour of one version rather than another. Bascom (1969a; 1969b),
Awolalu (1979) and-most strikingly-Simpson (1980) note discrepancies and alternative
versions without comment.
3 Bascom, for instance, remarksruefully of Osun that 'her amorous adventures complicate the
divine genealogies', for she is an iosd who is credited in different contexts with innumerable
liaisons and marriages(Bascom, 1969a: 90).
4 Pierre
Verger's book (1957) is an inexhaustible mine of information and insight, and the
only study to contain extensive oriki texts. Verger suggests that each cult is virtually an
independent theism, centred on its own bris. He bases his account mainly on narratives,
however, and he accounts for discrepancies in narrativesand devotional practices by postulating
the corruption of an earlier and more orderly state of unanimity. Though he translates the oriki
texts, he does not provide the detailed exegesis which alone can get oriki to yield any meaning.
McKenzie (1976) bases his very interesting and thoughtful discussion on an analysis of oriki
texts, but without quoting from them or examining their textual properties. His conclusionthat the self-centric cults (which he describes as examples of 'subjective theism') produce both
particularisationand reunification of orisd-is highly pertinent to my own argument.
5 Okukh is a small town in the Oy6 state of Nigeria, about twenty miles north of Osogbo. For
a detailed account of the town and of the role of oriki performance in it, see Barber
(forthcoming).
6 The devotion to more than one is
probably largely a result of decline in numbers of devotees,
for every orisdhas to be taken over by someone on the death of its current owner. According to
Ellis, writing in 1894, it was unusual for a devotee to have more than one god.
7 The
only ones which do not are those that belong solely to a single household head, such as
Esile of ile Ar6gun; to a single compound, such as Ori Oke of ile Ojomu; or to the town as a

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335

collectivity, such as Ol66kh. In the first case there is only one principal devotee; in the last two
cases the emphasis is on the unity of the devotees.
8 Ad6osuare initiates who are
empowered by the application of herbal medicines into incisions
in the scalp and who are thereafter able to be possessed by the brisa. In Okuki the Sang6, Oya,
and Sbponnon cults had ad6siu.
9According to the fascinating account by Thompson (1969) the ibt recognised in Egbido
include Alamo (written Alam6 by Thompson), Akanbi, Igberi, Ojutu (written Ojutu), and Oten.
He lists many others which are not recognised in Okuku, and there are some in Okuku which do
not appearin his list. But there is enough overlap to suggest an external origin for at least some of
the discriminations that are made. See also Verger (1957) and Beier (1956).
10 According to Beier (1956), in I16biiueach ibt of Erinle did have its own riverside shrine. In
some other cults in Okuki, also, orisd fragments have a material focus of devotion, a calabashor
pot which is placed at the orisa's shrine and which preserves the separate identities of orisa
fractions in concrete and visible form. Some also have a distinctive taboo: the 'seventeen'
Soponn6ns said to exist in Okuku, for example, each has its own (Wariwarhn'sdevotees must
never be beaten, Abata's must never hear the sound of a cooking pot being scraped, Adegbbon's
must never have water splashed on them, and so on).
1
Thompson's explanation, that the ibt are Erinle's children and followers, was not
mentioned in Okuku. As will be shown later, such 'relationships' should not be taken literally as
depictions of a pantheon of figures linked by marriage and birth. To say they are Erinle's
children is a metaphorical way of saying they are closely linked to him.
12
Discussion of the recruitment of devotees to Yoruba cults has tended to emphasise either
the existence of family brisa, sometimes described as deified ancestor figures, belonging to one
compound and served by all its members (e.g. Bascom, 1944), or the element of personal affinity
and desire, often worked out through the agency of Ifa, which assigns devotees to the iosd most
suited to their personalities (e.g. Beier, 1959). But in Okukii, the most significant principle is a
notion of 'place': a place in the community for each brissaand briss fraction, which has to be
maintained by a chain of devotees, and a place in the cult for each principal devotee which
likewise has to be kept open through succession. In some cults men can take over an orins
formerly propitiated by a woman, and vice versa; in others, even though they contain both male
and female devotees, women tend to pass on their onsa only to another woman. In the
predominantly female cults, such as Orisa Oko, women pass them to other women, while in the
predominantly male cults, such as Ifa, Ogfin and Egungfin, men pass them to other men. It is
worth noting, in view of my argument about women's power in cults, that the predominantly
men's cults are the only ones where a genre of oral art is actually practised by men: Ifd kiki in the
Ifa cult, ijald in the Ogin cult, and iwi in the egtingtincult. In the egtungin cult at least, however,
it is nevertheless women who are primarily responsible for invoking the ancestors and praising
the masquerade, giving them a key position not immediately evident from the distribution of cult
titles, which are monopolised by men.
13
Some women, however, did attain positions of prominence in the town. Usually these 'big
women' did tot acquire substantial corpuses of personal oriki, but there were a few examples of
women remembered for this. For a discussion of oriki and women's power see Barber
(forthcoming).
14
The Ifi priests are in many respects quite different from other brisd devotees, being
specialist and professional masters of a divinatory system which operates precisely by bringing all
the disparate cults and forces into relationship with each other and mediating between them.
(For the ordinary non-specialist devotee, however, Ifa does not represent an intellectual or
cosmological scheme but a source of recipes and models of action, elicited piecemeal according to
need. The spiritual world centres on their own brisdand their own ancestors.) But the Ifi cult
does in one sense work like any other orsd cult writ large, for the effect of all synthesising Ifa
stories is ultimately to claim a unique and superior position in the cosmology for Ifi: every
divination verse in the vast Ifa corpus reaffirmsthe sagacity of Ifa and the effectuality of the Ifi
divination system, and many explicitly show otherorisa at a disadvantagein comparisonwith Ifa.
For a discussion of the discursive techniques by which this position is maintained, see Barber
(1990).

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OF YORUBA GODS

REFERENCES

Abimbola, W. 1976. Ifa: an expositionof Ifa literarycorpus.Ibadan: Oxford University

Press.
Awolalu, J. 0. 1979. YorubaBeliefs and SacrificialRites. London: Longman.
Barber, Karin. 1981. 'How Man makes God in West Africa', Africa 51 (3), 724-45.
- 1990. 'Conversions and appropriationsin Iwe Odu Mimn of the African Church
of Ifa', in P. F. de Moraes Farias and Karin Barber (eds.), Self-assertionand
Brokerage:early cultural nationalismin West Africa. Birmingham: Birmingham
University African Studies Series, 2.
Forthcoming. I Could Speak Until Tomorrow:oriki, women and the past in a
Yoruba town. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for the International
African Institute.
Bascom, William. 1944. 'The sociological role of the Yoruba cult group', American
Anthropologist46 (1), 47-73.
1969a. The Yoruba of SouthwesternNigeria. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
1969b. Ifa Divination. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Beier, Ulli. 1956. The Story of Wood-carvingsfrom a Small Yoruba Town. Lagos:
Nigeria Magazine.
- 1959. A Yearof Sacred Festivals in One YorubaTown. Lagos: Nigeria Magazine.
Brenner, Louis. 1989. '"Religious" discourses in and about Africa', in Karin Barber
and P. F. de Moraes Farias (eds.), Discourseand its Disguises:the interpretation
of
African oral texts, pp. 87-105. Birmingham: Birmingham University African
Studies Series, 1.
Dennett, R. E. 1910. Nigerian Studies: or the religiousand political systemof the Yoruba
(reprinted 1968). London: Frank Cass.
Ellis, A. B. 1894. The Yoruba-speakingPeoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa
(reprinted 1966). The Netherlands: Oosterhout.
Farrow, S. S. 1926. Faith, Fancies and Fetish. London: SPCK.
Idowu, E. Bolaji. 1962. Olodumare:God in Yorubabelief. London: Longman.
Lucas, J. 0. 1948. The Religion of the Yorubas.Lagos: Church Missionary Society.
McKenzie, P. R. 1976. 'Yoruba brisd cults: some marginal notes concerning their
cosmology and concepts of deity', Journal of Religion in Africa 8 (3), 189-207.
Morton-Williams, Peter. 1964. 'An outline of the cosmology and cult organisation of
the Oyo Yoruba', Africa 34 (3), 243-61.
Simpson, G. E. 1980. Yoruba Religion and Medicine in Ibadan. Ibadan: Ibadan
University Press.
Thompson, R. F. 1969. 'Abatan: a master potter of the Egbado Yoruba', in Daniel
Biebuyck (ed.), Traditionand Creativityin TribalArt, pp. 120-82. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress.
Verger, Pierre. 1957. Notes sur le culte des brisdet vodun. Dakar: Memoiresde l'Institut
Franfais de l'AfriqueNoire, 51.

Resume

Oriki, les femmes, la multiplication et la fusion d'orins

Le monde spirituel des Yoruba est densement peuple par des divinites extr6mement
differentes les unes des autres et fortement caracterisees, mais presentant aussi des
aspects contradictoires et des tendances a la multiplication et a la fusion avec d'autres
entites spirituelles. De telles variations sont comprehensibles dans le contexte de la
structure sociale Yoruba qui accorde une place predominante aux vhommes forts)>
capables d'acquerir une position de leader en recrutant competitivement leurs

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337

supporters.Les orisd, commeles hommesforts, formentle centred'un groupede

fideles dont l'objectifest de renforcerla reputationde leur patronplutot que de
l'integrera un schemaconsensuelglobal.La (cosmologie?de chaqueculte se centre
sur son propreronsdet agenceles autresentites spirituellesde faqona augmenterla
presencede cet orisd. Le lien intimeet reciproqueentreles croyantset l'orisdfavorise
la multiplicationde fragmentsd'onrisd
permettanta chaquecroyantou petitgroupede
croyants de posseder sa <propre version))de l'etre spirituel. Mais comme le
centralismede cette relationreligieuseimplique un engagementintegralet sans
compromis,chaque orisddoit tout representerpour ses fideles, induisantainsi le
partageet la fusiondes aspectsspirituelsde la divinite.
La problematiquepeut etre portee plus avant si nous examinonsle medium a
traverslequel les multiplespersonnalitesde l'orisdsont imagineeset evoquees.Bien
que les etudes se soient exclusivementconsacreesa l'iutn(recit) pour caracteriser
l'orisd,le mediumessentialest en fait l'oriki(elogeversifiee).C'esten effet dansles
orikique les fidelesnouentleurlien intime,intenseet reciproqueavecl'ornis.Dansles
oriki,la concretisationde la personnalitede l'orinsest la plus completeet les divers
fragmentsou manifestationsd'un orisdy trouventleurexpressionla plus developpee.
Les orikisont fluides,eclectiques,incorporables;leur textualit6permetd'accomplir
pleinementles operationsintellectuellesnecessairesa la constructionde l'univers
religieuxfluide. C'est seulementen considerantles itdncommedes supplementsau
mode de l'oriki,plutot que l'inverse, que les contradictions-remarqueespar les
etudes les plus anciennesdu systemereligieuxYoruba-trouventleur placeen tant
et non pas commedes negligencesmalheureusesque l'erudit
qu'accomplissements,
doit classifierdansl'espoirde decouvrirun consensusglobalet unique.La cosmologie
Yoruban'estpas celle d'uneunite, maiscelle de la multiplicit6des routesqui menent
a traversdifferentschampsde ressourcessymboliques.Commeles femmessont les
principauxgardiensde la traditionorikt,leur role en termede communicationet de
depassementdes limitesest un elementcentraldu fonctionnementdes cultes.

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