Forty-five Yorùbá proverbs on childhood, youth, elderhood and the passage of a life from one station to the next, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Yorùbá proverb treats a human life as a passage through named stations, ọmọdé (child), èwe (youth), and àgbà (elder), each carrying its own permitted conduct, its own excuses and its own visible signs. The corpus is harder on the elder than on the youth: a young person who overreaches is corrected, an old person who overreaches is disgraced, and disgrace in an elder is proverbially worse than death. At the same time the record is emphatic that reaching the station is automatic and that performing it is not, and that longevity is wanted for its own sake regardless of what a long life turns out to contain.
Forty-five proverbs are given here in five groups: what the station of elder requires, what it entitles a person to, the traffic between old and young, the marks and losses of ageing, and longevity as a thing prayed for. Several proverbs make claims that are unflattering to elders, notably that an elder without money is no elder at all, and these are reported rather than balanced away.
The proverbs are given in Owomoyela's texts and translations . Owomoyela's parenthetical usage notes are the basis of the Used when lines; where the wording of a note is his, it is quoted. Anything marked as the compiler's is this corpus's own and carries lower confidence.
Owomoyela prints full standard orthography with tone marks and subdots, and his texts are reproduced here as printed . He attaches no informant to any proverb, holding that proverbs are communal property , so the texts are attested but not localised or dated. The working text used here is a plain-text extraction of the book in which the printed diacritics survive intact but word spacing inside each Yorùbá line does not, so every Yorùbá line below has been respaced by the compiler using ordinary Yorùbá grammar and vocabulary. No diacritic has been added, removed or altered. Where an extracted usage note breaks off mid-sentence, that is stated at the entry and the usage line is marked as the compiler's.
Literal: Àgbàlagbà an-elder kì í ṣe lágbalàgba does-not behave in-an-un-elderly-manner.
Idiomatic: "An elder should not behave in an unbecoming manner."
Meaning: There is a manner of conduct that the word for elder itself names, and departing from it is a failure of category rather than merely of behaviour.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should behave according to one's status"
Notes: The predicate ṣe lágbalàgba, to conduct oneself elder-fashion, is built directly on àgbàlagbà, so the sentence is close to tautological in Yorùbá and gains its force from that: an elder who does not act like an elder has failed at being what the word says he is. This is the file's governing claim and the other entries in this group are its cases.
Literal: Àgbà kì í ṣeré an-elder does-not play kí-ló-bá-yìí-wá "what-brought-this-about?"
Idiomatic: "An elderly person does not engage in the kind of play that provokes the comment, 'What brought all this about?'"
Meaning: Certain kinds of exuberance are open to the young and closed to the old, not because an elder could not manage them but because they no longer suit the station.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Elders should show decorum" He cross-references entry 126 of his collection, built on the identical closing phrase .
Notes: The whole quoted question is compressed into a single hyphenated nominal, kí-ló-bá-yìí-wá, and functions grammatically as the object of ṣeré, so the elder is said to play a kind of play named after the reaction it provokes. The proverb states the obligation by naming the embarrassment of breaking it, which is the corpus's usual method for rules everyone already knows.
Literal: Àgbà kì í ṣorò an-elder does-not perform-rites bí èwe like a-youth.
Idiomatic: "An elderly person does not perform rituals like a youth."
Meaning: The same act performed by an elder is judged by a different standard than when a youth performs it.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The elder's performance should be commensurate with his station and status"
Notes: Èwe and àgbà run as a fixed pair through this file's sources, and ṣorò, from ṣe plus orò, rite or custom, covers formal religious observance and the general conduct of custom alike. The proverb assumes the hearer knows what youthful performance looks like well enough to read its absence as decorum rather than incapacity.
Literal: Àgbà tí kò nítìjú an-elder who has-no shame, ojú kan ni ìbá ní one eye is-what he-would-have; ojú kan náà that-same one eye a wà lọ́gangan iwájú-u rẹ̀ would-be right in-the-middle-of his-forehead.
Idiomatic: "An elder without self-respect might as well have only one eye, that one eye being in the center of his forehead."
Meaning: Shamelessness in an elder is imagined as a physical deformity, as visible and as disfiguring as a single centred eye.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Shamelessness does not become an elder"
Notes: This proverb is treated at entry 33 of owe-head-face-ori for its place in that file's face-and-shame cluster. It is repeated here because the fault is specifically an elder's: the same shamelessness in a youth would not earn the proverb. Ìtìjú, shame, is the faculty discussed at entry 40 of owe-iwa-character, and here the corpus makes its possession an age obligation rather than a virtue.
Literal: Àgbà tó mọ ìtìjú an-elder who knows shame kì í folè ṣeré does-not with-theft play.
Idiomatic: "An elder who is wary of disgrace will not play at stealing."
Meaning: An elder with a working sense of shame keeps clear even of the appearance of an offence that would disgrace the station.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Anything that smacks of stealing will disgrace an elder"
Notes: The point is the appearance rather than the act: folè ṣeré, to make a game of theft, describes joking or pretence, not stealing, and the proverb forbids the joke. An elder's whole position rests on accumulated regard, so he has more to lose from a suspicion than a youth has from a conviction.
Literal: Àgbàlagbà tó wọ̀ wù àṣejù an-elder who wears the-garment of-excess, ẹ̀tẹ́ ni yó fi rí disgrace is-what he-will thereby find.
Idiomatic: "An elder who wears the garment of immoderation will find disgrace because of it."
Meaning: Excess is figured as clothing an elder puts on, and disgrace is how that garment fits.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Immoderation brings disgrace"
Notes: Owomoyela prints the same clause as the third limb of a longer proverb at 206, Àṣejù baba àṣetẹ́; ẹ̀tẹ́ ní ń gbẹ̀hìn àṣejù; àgbàlagbà tó wẹ̀wù àṣejù ẹ̀tẹ́ ni yó fi rí, "Lack of moderation is the father of disgrace; disgrace comes of immoderation; a grown person who clothes himself in immoderation will find disgrace," which he calls a more elaborate form of this entry . The pair shows a proverb circulating both alone and as the punchline of a chain, the same doubling seen at entries 1 and 2 of owe-beauty-ugliness-appearance.
Literal: Àlémú being-chased-and-caught ò yẹ àgbà does-not suit an-elder; àgbà kì í ṣe ohun àlémú an-elder does-not do a-thing of-being-chased.
Idiomatic: "To be pursued does not become an elder; an elder does not cause himself to be pursued."
Meaning: An elder must not put himself in a position where he can be run down in public.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Elders should always behave in ways that would cause them no disgrace"
Notes: Àlémú is a compressed nominal from lé, chase, plus mú, catch, naming the whole event of being pursued and taken. Owomoyela prints a variant at 344 opening with the cry "Gbà mí, gbà mí!", "Save me, save me!", which does not become an elder either , and the two together make the point physically: an elder who has to run or shout for rescue has already lost the composure the station consists of.
Literal: Jẹ́jẹ́ gently leégún àgbà ń jó is-how the-elderly masquerader dances.
Idiomatic: "Sedately is the way an elderly masquerader dances."
Meaning: An old performer performs within what his body and his standing allow, and the restraint is read as mastery rather than decline.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Grown-up people should behave in a decorous manner"
Notes: Eégún is the masked ancestral masquerade, treated in owe-death-ancestors-beyond, and its dancing is competitive and athletic, so an elder masquerader dancing gently is doing publicly what the whole decorum group asks of elders privately. The ideophone jẹ́jẹ́, softly or gently, carries the sense of deliberateness that English "sedately" only partly reaches.
Literal: Àgbà-ìyà a-wretched-elder tí ń mu ọkọ ọ̀níní who drinks gruel worth one-tenth-of-a-penny: ó ní he says nítorí omi gbígbóná orí-i rẹ̀ ni it-is because-of the-hot water on-top-of-it.
Idiomatic: "Worthless elderly person who is eating corn gruel worth one-tenth of a penny: he says he only wants the hot water on top of it."
Meaning: A man reduced to the cheapest food dresses the fact up as a preference, and the pretence is what earns the contempt.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should act according to the demands of one's status"
Notes: Ọ̀níní is a tenth of a penny, a colonial-era coin denomination, which dates the wording of this text to after the introduction of British currency and marks it as later than the cowrie proverb at entry 10. The compound àgbà-ìyà, literally elder-of-suffering, is Owomoyela's "worthless elderly person" and is a term of contempt rather than of pity.
Literal: Àgbà tó torí ogójì wọ ìyẹ̀wù an-elder who because-of forty [cowries] enters the-inner-chamber: igbawó two-hundred-cowries ò tó ohun à-mú-ṣèyẹ is-not-enough for-what-one-takes-for-display.
Idiomatic: "The elder who escapes into his inner chamber because of 40 cowries: 200 cowries are not enough for casual spending."
Meaning: Retreat over a trivial sum is out of all proportion to what an elder's actual station costs to maintain.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One must act as one's station demands"
Notes: Ogójì, forty, and igbawó, two hundred cowries, place the text in the cowrie currency period, which ran until the early colonial era and is displaced by the penny in entry 9. The numbers are load-bearing rather than decorative: the argument only works if the second sum genuinely dwarfs the first, and both are still small.
Literal: Àgbààgbà ìlú the-elders of-the-town ò lè péjọ cannot assemble kí wọn ó jẹ ìfun òkété and eat the-intestines of-a-bush-rat, àfi iyán àná only yesterday's pounded-yam.
Idiomatic: "The elders of the town will not assemble and eat the intestines of a bush rat, only stale pounded yams."
Meaning: Even a poor meal is more fitting to the collective dignity of elders than a dish beneath their station.
Used when: Owomoyela: "People should behave in ways that befit their station"
Notes: Both options are unappealing, which is the point: the proverb is not claiming that elders eat well, only that what they eat must stay inside the bounds their standing sets. Àgbààgbà is the reduplicated plural, the assembled elders acting as a body, which is what makes the choice a public one.
Literal: À-sẹ́-kú denying-until-death làgbàlagbà ń sẹ́ ọ̀ràn is-how an-elder denies a-matter.
Idiomatic: "Denying-until-death is the way an old person denies a matter."
Meaning: Once an elder has denied a charge he cannot afford to concede it later, so the denial has to be carried to the grave.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One must never admit to doing something unworthy of one's position"
Notes: This is the least attractive proverb in the group and the most revealing about how the corpus values an elder's standing: the value protected is reputation, not truth, and the gloss says so plainly. Set it against owe-truthfulness-lying-integrity, where truthfulness is treated as an absolute, and the two files show the corpus holding two positions that do not reconcile. À-sẹ́-kú is a compressed nominal on the frame à- plus verb, naming a whole policy in one word.
Literal: Àgbàlagbà ń fìrọ́jú rọ̀run an-elder is with-reluctant-face making-for-heaven, a ní kó kí lé kó kọ́nà we say let-him greet the-household and the-road; ojú rere ló fi ń lọ is-it with a-good face that he-goes?
Idiomatic: "An elder is making his way to heaven with great reluctance, and we ask him to give our regards to all and sundry; is he departing cheerfully?"
Meaning: Loading errands onto a person who is going somewhere he does not want to go is a failure to notice his condition.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should be sensitive to other people's predicaments," noting that this is a variant of the entry before it in his collection, in which the elder is merely going to Ìlọrin in anger .
Notes: The pair is worth setting out. At 3310 the elder is off to Ìlọrin in a temper and is asked to bring back galena; at 3311, printed here, the journey is to heaven and the errand is to pass on greetings . The escalation from a bad-tempered trip to a dying man is the joke, and it turns on the Yorùbá convention of asking any traveller to carry messages, which is treated in owe-road-journey-traveller. Rọ̀run is rọ, to head for, plus ọ̀run, the beyond.
Literal: Àgbà ní ń jẹ ọkàn it-is elders who eat the-heart; ọmọdé ní ń jẹ ara ẹran it-is youths who eat the-body of-the-animal.
Idiomatic: "Only elders eat the heart; the youth eat the flesh."
Meaning: The prized portion goes by rank, and rank here is age.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Each station has its particular obligations"
Notes: Owomoyela glosses a rule about privilege as one about obligation, which is not an error but the Yorùbá reading: the heart is the part that carries meaning, and eating it is a duty of office as much as a perquisite. Ọkàn is both the physical heart and the seat of will and courage, a doubling discussed in owe-stomach-appetite-inner-person, so the elder is eating the animal's resolve.
Literal: Àgbà an-elder ní ń kọ́ àpò àgbà is-who hangs-up the-satchel of-an-elder.
Idiomatic: "Only an elder may hang the satchel of an elder [on his shoulder]."
Meaning: The insignia of the station may be carried only by someone who holds it.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Certain privileges are restricted to elders"
Notes: The sentence repeats àgbà on both sides of the verb, so it says almost nothing propositionally and everything positionally: the satchel is defined as an elder's by the fact that only an elder carries it. This is the same circularity worked at entry 1, and the corpus uses it where the rule is treated as needing no external justification.
Literal: Àgbà ló tó Orò-ó lọ̀ it-is an-elder who is-fit to-invoke Orò; ọba ló tó ehín erin-ín fun it-is a-king who is-fit to-blow the-elephant's-tusk.
Idiomatic: "Only a [male] elder is qualified to invoke Orò; only a king is qualified to blow a horn carved out of elephant tusk."
Meaning: Two offices, two exclusive instruments, and no substitution between them.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Certain tasks are for august people only"
Notes: Orò is a male cult whose rites are closed to women on pain of death, a restriction Owomoyela records elsewhere in the collection, and the bracketed "[male]" in his translation is his own clarification of what àgbà means in this context . The ivory horn is a royal instrument, so the proverb pairs an age qualification with an office qualification and treats them as the same kind of fact. See owe-taboo-pollution-forbidden and owe-palace-shrine-grove.
Literal: Ohùn àgbà an-elder's voice: bí kò ta ìgún if it does-not yield pounding-yams, a ta èbù it yields seed-yams.
Idiomatic: "An elder's voice: if it does not yield yams ready for pounding [for food], it will yield yam seedlings ready for planting."
Meaning: Whatever an elder says is worth something, either immediately or as something to plant and use later.
Used when: Owomoyela: "There is some value in whatever comes out of an elder's mouth"
Notes: Ìgún is the yam fit for pounding into iyán and èbù is the cut seed-yam kept for planting, so the two outcomes are food now or a crop next season, and the proverb refuses to let an elder's speech be worthless in either register. Compare entry 25 of owe-speech-silence-tongue, where the same claim is made with a hunting and war image rather than a farming one.
Literal: Ẹni tó mọ èyí tí yó gbẹ̀hìn ọ̀rọ̀ the-one who knows what will come-last in-the-matter là ń pè lágbà is-whom we call an-elder.
Idiomatic: "Only the person who knows the last word in a matter deserves the title of elder."
Meaning: Eldership is defined by the ability to end a dispute, not by years.
Used when: Owomoyela: "An elder earns his status by his effectiveness in settling disputes"
Notes: This is the file's sharpest correction to the assumption that age alone makes an elder, and it sits directly against entry 25, where survival is said to be sufficient. The two claims are not reconciled anywhere in the collection and the disagreement is left standing here. Compare entry 44, which says the same thing in the register of status rather than of function.
Literal: Àgbà ò sí elders being-absent ìlú bàjẹ́ the-town is-ruined; baálé ilé kú the-head of-the-house dies, ilé dahoro the-house becomes-derelict.
Idiomatic: "Without elders a town is ruined; the patriarch of the compound dies, and the household becomes an empty shell."
Meaning: Elders are load-bearing, and a settlement without them collapses.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Elders hold a community together"
Notes: Dahoro, to become a deserted ruin, is used of abandoned settlements and carries the physical image of roofs falling in, which is why the second clause is not merely a restatement of the first at smaller scale but its mechanism. The proverb is a standing argument for gerontocracy and is quoted as such; owe-family-lineage-compound treats the baálé office at length.
Literal: Agbè ní ń jẹ ẹ̀gbin omi it-is the-gourd that consumes the-dregs of-the-water; àgbàlagbà ní ń jẹ ìyà ọ̀rọ̀ it-is the-elder that consumes the-suffering of-the-matter.
Idiomatic: "It is the gourd that inherits the dregs of water; it is the elder that inherits the unpleasantness of a dispute."
Meaning: Whoever holds the vessel holds what settles at the bottom of it.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Every position carries its responsibilities"
Notes: The same verb jẹ governs both clauses, so the elder eats the unpleasantness exactly as the gourd eats the sediment, and English needs two different verbs where Yorùbá uses one. Set beside entry 18, this makes settling disputes both the qualification for the title and its cost.
Literal: Àgbà tó bú ọmọdé an-elder who insults a-child fi èébú-u rẹ̀ tọrọ uses his-insult to-solicit.
Idiomatic: "An elder who insults a youth makes a present of his own insult."
Meaning: An elder who drops the courtesy due from age to youth forfeits the courtesy owed back.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Only those who show respect for others may expect respect in return," a gloss he attaches to this entry together with the two around it .
Notes: The verb tọrọ, to beg or solicit, applied to an elder insulting a child, makes the elder the party asking for disrespect, which reverses the expected direction of deference. Owomoyela prints a compressed version at 3305, Àgbà tó bú èwe lèwe ḿbú, "It is an elder who insults a youth that a youth insults" , and the shorter form is the more usable in speech.
Literal: Àgbà tó fi ara-a rẹ̀ féwe an-elder who gives himself over-to-youths lèwe ḿbú is-whom youths insult.
Idiomatic: "It is an elder who delivers himself unto youths that the youth will insult."
Meaning: An elder who erases the customary distance between the stations loses the protection that distance was providing.
Used when: Owomoyela: "If one wants to be respected, one should respect oneself," with a cross-reference marking entries 21 and 22 as a set .
Notes: Owomoyela prints these two and a third consecutively as one argument approached from three angles: insult begets insult, informality begets insult, and self-respect is the precondition of respect from the young. The proverb is not a complaint about youthful manners but a claim about what the elder has done to himself, which is the corpus's usual placement of responsibility.
Literal: Bí àgbà kò bá ṣe ohun ẹ̀rù if an-elder does-not do a-fearful thing, ọmọdé kì í sá a-youth does-not flee.
Idiomatic: "If an elder does not do something fearful, the youth do not flee."
Meaning: The fear the young show is produced by what the old actually do, and is evidence about them rather than about the young.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Youth responds to age according to how age acts"
Notes: The proverb reads a social fact backwards from its effect, which is a standard Yorùbá inferential move: the observable thing is the flight, and the sentence uses it as testimony about the person fled from. Read with entries 21 and 22 the group amounts to a consistent claim that every failure in the relation between age and youth originates on the older side.
Literal: Bí ọmọdé bá fẹ́ẹ́ ṣìṣe àgbà if a-youth wants to-do-the-work-of an-elder, ọjọ́ orí-i rẹ̀ ò níí jẹ́ the-days of-his-head [his age] will-not permit-it.
Idiomatic: "If a youth attempts to act like an elder, his age will stop him."
Meaning: The years themselves refuse the attempt, whatever the young person's ability or intention.
Used when: Owomoyela: "A youth does not have what it takes to be an elder"
Notes: Ọjọ́ orí, literally the days of the head, is the ordinary Yorùbá phrase for a person's age and supplies this file's title; the orí in it is the same word treated as destiny and as head in owe-head-face-ori, so a person's age is grammatically a property of their destiny. Here the age is made the grammatical agent of the refusal, so nothing and nobody has to enforce the rule.
Literal: Bí ọmọdé ò kú if a-youth does-not die, àgbà ní ń dà an-elder is-what he-turns-into.
Idiomatic: "If a youth does not die, he becomes an elder."
Meaning: Survival alone, given time, converts youth into eldership, and nothing further is required.
Used when: Owomoyela: "In time even a youth assumes the mantle of an elder"
Notes: The structure is a bare conditional whose only condition is not dying, which makes it closer to a statement of biology than to counsel, and it is used to console or to needle depending on who says it to whom. It stands directly against entry 18, where the title has to be earned by competence in settling disputes, and the collection prints both without comment.
Literal: Ojú kan náà that-same one point lèwe ń bá gbà is-where a-youth arrives-and-takes-over.
Idiomatic: "It is at the same place that the youth will come up on the elder."
Meaning: Given time, the youth reaches the very point the elder now occupies.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Sooner or later the youth becomes an elder; patience is all"
Notes: Owomoyela prints a fuller variant at 3536, Ibi tí àgbà-á bá pin sí lọmọdé ti ḿbá a, "Wherever age comes to rest, there youth will catch up with it," glossed as the same claim . The two stations are not separate categories but positions on one track, which is the logic the whole file rests on, and the second version adds that the elder eventually stops moving.
Literal: Bí ọmọdé bá máa só if a-youth is-about-to fart, a wo iwájú he looks in-front; bí àgbà á bá máa só if an-elder is-about-to fart, a wo ẹ̀hìn he looks behind.
Idiomatic: "If a youth wants to fart, he looks ahead; if an elder wants to fart, he looks behind."
Meaning: The young check who is above them and the old check who is coming after them, and the same act is governed by opposite anxieties.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The youth should consider what his elders will make of his actions, whereas the elder should consider what example his actions set for the youth"
Notes: Iwájú and ẹ̀hìn, front and back, are also the Yorùbá spatial terms for the future and the past, and in age contexts for those senior and junior to a person, which is why the proverb's geometry is exact: the youth looks toward those ahead of him in years, the elder toward those behind. Compare entry 3100 of the collection, Iwájú latí ń jogún; ẹ̀hìn latí ń ṣàgbà, "One inherits from one's front, and one sets an example at one's back" , which makes the same axis explicit without the joke.
Literal: Bí ọmọdé láṣọ bí àgbà though a-youth has-cloth like an-elder, kò lè lákìísà bí àgbà he cannot have-rags like an-elder.
Idiomatic: "A youth may have as many clothes as an elder, but he will not have as many rags as an elder."
Meaning: Wealth can be matched quickly and accumulated wear cannot, so the elder keeps an advantage that money does not buy.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Though a youth may enjoy the same rank as an elder, he cannot match the elder in experience"
Notes: The proverb makes rags rather than cloth the measure of a life, which inverts the ordinary reading of both, and it is the corpus's most elegant statement of what experience actually consists of: the residue of use. Àkísà here is a store of worn-out cloth rather than the single rag of entry 8, and the change of number carries the whole argument. Compare owe-clothing-nakedness-what-is-worn.
Literal: Kàkà kí ọmọdé pàgbà láyò rather-than a-youth beating an-elder at-ayò, àgbà a fi ọgbọ́n àgbà gbé e the-elder will with an-elder's cunning carry it.
Idiomatic: "Instead of permitting defeat by a child in a game, an elder should resort to elderly wiles."
Meaning: An elder facing defeat at the hands of a child will use whatever the years have taught him rather than lose in public.
Used when: Owomoyela: "An elder should save face and protect his standing by all means available"
Notes: Ayò is the seed-and-board count-and-capture game played across Yorùbá country, where skill is visible to spectators and a loss cannot be explained away, which is why it is the game the proverb chooses. The phrase ọgbọ́n àgbà, an elder's cunning, is left undefined, and the proverb's dryness lies in not saying whether it means better play or cheating.
Literal: Ewú logbó grey-hair is old-age; irùngbọ̀n làgbà a-beard is eldership; máa mú làfojúdi a-moustache is impudence.
Idiomatic: "Gray hair shows age; a beard shows maturity; a mustache shows impudence."
Meaning: Three growths of hair are read as three social claims, only two of which are respectable.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One's appearance in a group sometimes indicates one's attitude toward the group"
Notes: Ewú is grey hair and ogbó is old age, and the first clause identifies the sign with the thing signified rather than saying the one indicates the other, which is the same equative construction as Ìwà lẹwà at entry 1 of owe-iwa-character. The third clause breaks the pattern by attributing an attitude rather than an age, which is the joke: a moustache without a beard is a young man claiming seniority he does not have.
Literal: Irun dúdú black hair ní ń ṣíwájú ewú is-what goes-before grey-hair.
Idiomatic: "Black hair is the forerunner of white hair."
Meaning: Youth is the stage that precedes age, and having the first guarantees arriving at the second.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Old age comes inexorably after youth"
Notes: Ṣíwájú, to go in front, is the verb used of a herald or forerunner going ahead of a procession, so black hair is cast as an announcement of grey rather than its opposite. Owomoyela prints at 965 the same colour pair put to a moral use, Ẹni tó fi irun dúdú ṣeré, yó fi funfun sin ẹni ẹlẹ́ni, "Whoever plays around with his or her black hair will serve others with his or her white hair" , treated at entry 6 of owe-children-parenthood-inheritance.
Literal: Ogbó old-age ò lóògùn has-no medicine.
Idiomatic: "Aging has no antidote."
Meaning: There is no preparation against growing old.
Used when: Owomoyela: "We all grow old, willy-nilly"
Notes: Òògùn is medicine in the full Yorùbá sense, covering herbal preparation and prepared power alike, and denying that any exists for a condition is the strongest statement of inevitability the language has. The same construction is used of death, and owe-aje-medicine-hidden-power sets out what the claim is denying: not that no herb cures it, but that no power of any kind touches it.
Literal: Bí a bá dàgbà if we grow-old, tí a gbó and become-aged, bó pẹ́ títí if it lasts long-enough ojú á kájọ́ the-eyes will gather-in the-days.
Idiomatic: "If one lives long and grows old, in time one's eyes will encompass all."
Meaning: Live long enough and you will have seen everything there is to see.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Age is experience"
Notes: Kájọ́ compresses ká, to gather or encircle, with ọjọ́, days, so the eyes are said to collect the days in the way a hand gathers scattered things, and Owomoyela's "encompass all" keeps the sweep at the cost of the harvesting image. This is the positive case of the sight-and-age claim; entry 34 gives the version in which what has been seen has cost the eyes something.
Literal: Ohun tí ojú àgbà-á rí what an-elder's eyes have-seen tó fi jìn such-that they-became-sunken; bí tọmọdé bá rí i if a-youth's should see it á fọ́ they-would-burst.
Idiomatic: "That which the elder's eyes saw and became sunken, if a youth's eyes see it, they will go blind."
Meaning: What an elder has absorbed at real cost would destroy someone who has not yet built the capacity for it.
Used when: Owomoyela's note reads that what an elder can easily endure will destroy a youth .
Notes: Owomoyela's gloss says "easily endure" where his own translation says the elder's eyes sank in the process, and the disagreement is worth marking: the Yorùbá describes damage, not ease, and the difference between sunken eyes and burst ones is a difference of degree. Fọ́ is the verb for an eye bursting or being put out, treated in owe-eyes-seeing-blindness. The point of the proverb is that endurance is built and not given.
Literal: Ìgbà yí làárọ̀ is-this-time morning? Arúgbó ń ṣoge the-old-person is-dressing-up.
Idiomatic: "Is it just morning now? The old person is grooming himself or herself."
Meaning: An effort that would have counted for something earlier has arrived at a point in life when it can no longer do the work it was for.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Never wait until it is too late before you look to your well-being"
Notes: The Yorùbá day is the standing metaphor for a life, morning being youth and evening old age, and the sarcastic question is the whole argument: the speaker is pointing out that this is not morning. Owomoyela prints the identical frame at 2118 with the old man making two hundred yam heaps in a day instead of grooming , and the pair covers vanity and labour with one joke. See entry 41 for the same day-and-life metaphor used approvingly.
Literal: Ikán ń jẹ ilé termites are eating the-house, àgbà ń sọ̀ the-old-person is complaining; àgbà náà that-same old-person oúnjẹ ikán is-food-for termites.
Idiomatic: "Termites eat up the house, and the old person complains; but the old man or woman himself or herself is food for termites."
Meaning: The person protesting the destruction of the structure is on the same schedule as the structure.
Used when: Owomoyela: "If a certain fate awaits one, one should not make futile efforts to protect others from it"
Notes: Yorùbá burial in the compound floor makes the second clause literal rather than figurative: the same insects that consume the mud-and-timber house will reach the body buried in it. The proverb is not consoling and does not try to be, and it belongs equally with owe-death-ancestors-beyond.
Literal: Ti ikú ti ikú death-and-death là ń ro àgbà is-how we regard an-elder; àgbà ní ń pète àìkú the-elder is-who plans not-dying.
Idiomatic: "People always look at aged people with death in their eyes; the aged are the ones who strive to stay alive."
Meaning: Everyone around an old person has already written them off, and the old person has not.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Each person is the most reliable guardian of his or her own well-being"
Notes: The reduplication ti ikú ti ikú has no English equivalent and means something like death-wise and death-wise, a persistent frame rather than an occasional thought, and it is the proverb's evidence for how the old are actually treated. Pète, to scheme or plan for, is deliberately a verb of active intention, so the elder is not merely hoping but working at it, which is the entry's dignity.
Literal: Àgbà tí ń fọ̀ níká àlá an-elder who is holding-forth in-the-back-yard ìlówó lọ́wọ́ without-money in-hand, akọ ajá ní ń gbó it-is a-male dog barking.
Idiomatic: "An elder sounding off in the back yard without money in his possession is like a barking male dog."
Meaning: An elder with no means produces noise that nobody is obliged to attend to.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Money makes the person"
Notes: This is the harshest entry in the file and it contradicts the whole decorum group: entries 1 through 13 assume an elder's word carries weight, and this one says the weight was never the age. Owomoyela prints it beside 2797, where an elderly man with no money is said to lack wisdom while the rich man is a king on his farm , and both sit in his section on material wealth rather than his section on elders, which is where the corpus keeps the claim it does not want to make in the other voice. Compare entry 2826, "If one does not have the accouterments of elders, one seems a mere youth"
Literal: Ẹ̀mí gígùn long life lèrè ayé is the-profit of-the-world.
Idiomatic: "Longevity is the reward of living."
Meaning: The return on a life is more life, not anything a life produces.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Longevity is most to be desired by all," noting this as a variant of 2953 .
Notes: Èrè is profit in the commercial sense, the surplus a trader takes from a transaction, which makes the claim economic rather than sentimental: living is the venture, more living is the margin. Owomoyela prints the variant at 2953, Pípẹ́ láyé lèrè ayé, "Longevity is the profit of living," which he glosses as the reward for having lived a good life , a condition the present entry does not impose.
Literal: Ẹ̀mí gígùn long life ní ń sàn yà is-what makes-up-for suffering.
Idiomatic: "It is longevity that makes up for suffering."
Meaning: Enough years cancel the account of what those years contained.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Longevity makes all suffering worthwhile"
Notes: Ìyà, suffering, is the same word that appears in jẹ ìyà ọ̀rọ̀ at entry 20 and in àgbà-ìyà at entry 9, and the corpus is consistent that a life contains a great deal of it. The claim here is not that long life is pleasant but that it settles the balance, which is the strongest thing the collection says in favour of old age and the one that entries 35 to 38 make hard to believe.
Literal: Ọjọ́ alẹ́ the-evening of-the-day là ń tọrọ is-what we beg-for.
Idiomatic: "It is nighttime [i.e., old age] that one should pray for."
Meaning: The end of the day is what is asked for, since reaching it is not guaranteed.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Old age is everybody's desire"
Notes: The bracketed gloss is Owomoyela's own and is needed, because ọjọ́ alẹ́ means evening plainly and old age only by the standing day-for-life metaphor that entry 35 also uses. Tọrọ, to beg or ask for, is the verb of prayer here as it was the verb of soliciting insult at entry 21, and the same word carrying petition and begging is why the corpus can move so easily between asking a person and asking a power.
Literal: Agẹmọ the-chameleon kì í kú ní kékeré does-not die while small.
Idiomatic: "The chameleon does not die young."
Meaning: Stated as a fact about the animal and used as a wish about a person.
Used when: Owomoyela: "A prayer for longevity"
Notes: The chameleon is Ọbàtálá's messenger in Yorùbá narrative and moves with the slowness that the proverb converts into length of days, so the choice of animal is doctrinal rather than zoological. Owomoyela prints a parallel at 5037, Igún nugún kì í kú séwe, "The vulture never dies young," also glossed as a wish for long life , the vulture being the sacrificial bird nobody kills. Both work by naming a creature that is never seen dead young.
Literal: Òwúrọ̀ latí ḿmọ from the-morning is-when-one-knows bí alẹ́ yó ti san ni sí how the-evening will turn-out for-one.
Idiomatic: "It is from the morning that one knows how good one's night will be."
Meaning: The shape of the end is legible in the beginning.
Used when: Owomoyela: "From youth one can tell how pleasant one's old age will be"
Notes: Owomoyela's usage note converts the day metaphor into the life metaphor explicitly, which the Yorùbá leaves implicit and available for both readings, and this is the file's clearest case of a proverb that means something ordinary and something large in the same words. Compare 718, Àì-gbọ́n-léwe ni à-dàgbà-di-wèrè, "Lack-of-wisdom-in-youth is imbecility in adulthood" , which makes the same claim without the metaphor and much less gently.
Literal: Àtètè dáyé being-first-to-arrive-in-the-world ò kan tàgbà has-nothing-to-do-with eldership; orí ẹni one's own head ní ń gbé ni ga is-what lifts one high.
Idiomatic: "Primogeniture has nothing to do with elderliness; it is the head that elevates one."
Meaning: Being born first does not confer the standing of an elder; destiny does.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Age is no guarantee of status"
Notes: Orí is here the destiny-head, the personal portion chosen before birth and treated at length in owe-head-face-ori and owe-fate-gods-responsibility, so the proverb replaces one non-negotiable criterion, birth order, with another, and does not open the field to effort. Read beside entry 25, where survival alone suffices, and entry 18, where competence is the test, the corpus is holding three incompatible accounts of what makes an elder and does not adjudicate between them.
Literal: Ẹni tó sọ pé òkúta a máa dàgbà whoever says that stones do grow-old ò purọ́ does-not lie; ẹni tó sọ pé òkúta kì í dàgbà whoever says that stones do-not grow-old ò purọ́ does-not lie.
Idiomatic: "The person who says that rocks age does not lie; the person who says that rocks do not age does not lie."
Meaning: Both statements about the ageing of stone are true, on different timescales.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Two people can see the same situation in different but equally valid ways"
Notes: The proverb chooses stone precisely because it is the limiting case: it does weather, and it does not do so on any scale a human observer inhabits, so the contradiction is real and unresolvable rather than a trick. Placed at the end of a file whose entries disagree with each other about what makes an elder, it reads as the corpus's own comment on that disagreement, and it belongs with owe-disputed-meanings.
Literal: Adìẹ funfun the-white chicken ò mọ ara ẹ̀ lágbà does-not know itself as-an-elder.
Idiomatic: "The white chicken does not recognize itself as an elder."
Meaning: It carries the visible mark of seniority and does not behave accordingly.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should act one's age always"
Notes: White plumage reads as the bird's grey hair, so the chicken wears the sign of age discussed at entry 1476 of this collection while conducting itself like any other fowl. The proverb faults not the absence of seniority but the failure to notice one's own, which distinguishes it from the entries in this group that fault an elder for lapsing: here the elder has not registered the promotion. Owomoyela prints it at 86, immediately before a second chicken proverb at 87, and the two are unrelated in sense.
Three things stand out across these forty-five proverbs.
Age is a station with prescribed conduct, and the corpus is harder on the elder than on the youth. Entries 1 through 13 all describe things an elder may not do, and almost none of them describes an act that would draw comment in a young person: playing, rejoicing loudly, taking the cheap meal, being chased, being handed food. Where a proverb does discipline the young, as at entries 24, 27 and 29, the constraint is deference rather than decorum, and the failure it guards against is a failure of manners rather than of dignity. The asymmetry is consistent, and it follows from what entry 19 asserts, that elders are the structure a town rests on. Something load-bearing is held to a stricter test.
The collection cannot agree on what actually makes an elder, and prints all its answers. Entry 25 says survival is sufficient. Entry 18 says only the person who can produce the last word in a dispute deserves the title. Entry 44 says neither age nor birth order matters and destiny decides. Entry 38 says an elder without money is a barking dog. These do not reconcile, and the collection makes no attempt to reconcile them, which is a fact about how proverbs are used rather than a defect in the record: each is deployed in the argument it fits, and a speaker who needs one is not troubled by the existence of the others. Entry 45, on whether stones age, reads almost as a note on this.
Longevity is wanted for itself, independently of what a long life is like. Entries 39 to 43 treat long life as the profit of living, as compensation for suffering, and as the thing prayed for, and entry 42 shows that prayer being made through the chameleon and the vulture. But entries 35 to 38 show what old age is actually like in this corpus: a body worn to a rag, eyes sunk from what they have seen, termites already accounted for, and a man whose words carry no weight because he has no money. The corpus is not claiming that old age is good. It is claiming that it is wanted, which is a different and more durable position, and one that entry 40 states exactly: the years do not have to be pleasant to be worth having.
Fifty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on character, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Sourced Yorùbá proverbs on bearing and raising children, the duties of parents, the training of the young, and what passes from one generation to the next.
Twenty-six Yorùbá proverbs on mortality, ìkú (death), and ọ̀run (the beyond), drawn from Owomoyela's dedicated section on the subject, showing how ordinary speech treats death as certain, undodgeable, and impartial.
Sourced Yorùbá proverbs on what age and seniority are owed, what they owe back, and the limits of both.
Forty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on the ọmọlúàbí ideal, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Sourced Yorùbá proverbs about telling the truth, the mechanics of lying and self-deception, and the value placed on a person whose word is reliable.