Oral Poetry from Africa
Ulli Beier describes Alajire as a manifestation of the Òrìṣà, Ṣọ̀pọ̀na, who is more commonly known as Ọbalúayé or Babalú-Ayé. This Òrìṣà is associated with suffering and diseases such as smallpox, leprosy and AIDS.
Alajire, we ask you to be patient,
you are very quick-tempered
Oshun, or Ọ̀ṣun in Yorùbá, is an Òrìṣà goddess associated with rivers and the marketplace. Medicines for fertility, wealth, love and intimacy are often attributed to her.
Brass and parrot feathers
on a velvet skin.
In the pantheistic religion of the Yorùbá people there exists a supreme God, Olodumare, who is considered almighty and eternal. However, no prayers or shrines are kept for Olodumare because the nature of such a being is regarded as beyond human comprehension. Olodumare creates various Orisha, who are manifestations of certain aspects of the supreme God and with whom humans can interact.
He is patient.
He is silent.
This is one of the 16 most important poems of Ifá, the divination system of the Yorùbá. In this long and fascinating poem we meet many of the principal Yorùbá Òrìṣà (gods) and each is characteristically described. But the central argument is that each man’s fate is ultimately decided by his own character.
Orunmila said that one always bends down when entering the doorway.
Ifa asked the question,
‘Who among you Gods could follow your devotee
to a distant journey over the seas?’..
A Yorùbá Oríkì (praise-poem) from Nigeria. Ògún is the god of iron and metallurgy. He is pictured as a blacksmith, but presides over every activity in which iron is used — hoes for cultivating, cutlasses for reaping, guns for hunting, cars for travelling, and so on. He therefore becomes a god of creativity and of harvesting, of hunting and of warfare, of invention and exploration and destruction.
Ogun kills on the right and destroys on the right.
Ogun kills on the left and destroys on the left.
A Yorùbá Oríkì (praise-poem) from Nigeria. As the god of fate, the uncontrollable element in human life, Eshu (Èṣù in Yorùbá) is praised as a kind of trickster god, bringing about the unexpected, the contradictory and the downright impossible.
Eshu turns right into wrong, wrong into right.
When he is angry, he hits a stone until it bleeds.
