Fourteen Yorùbá proverbs on what a wrongdoer is owed once guilt is settled, on forgiveness as a practical act rather than a sentiment, and on consequence as something that arrives on its own, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Ìyà is punishment or imposed suffering, and ìdáríjì is forgiveness, literally the act of untying a person from the offense laid against them. owe-justice-judgement-court, a companion file in this corpus, already collects forty proverbs on how a Yorùbá case is heard and decided: fair hearing, the corrupt judge, guilt inferred from behaviour, who escapes the court's reach. This file starts where that one stops, after guilt has been settled, and asks what happens next. Fourteen proverbs are collected here, in three groups: punishment fitted to the offender rather than to those around him, forgiveness treated as a transaction that closes a case rather than a feeling that pardons it, and consequence as a force that does not need a court to operate.
The proverbs are given in Owomoyela's texts and translations unless another source is named. Owomoyela's parenthetical usage notes are the basis of the Used when lines; where the wording is his it is quoted.
Literal: Ààbà stakes ò ṣéé kàn are-not to-be-driven mọ́ ẹni lẹ́sẹ̀ onto a-person's legs, àfi ẹni tí ńṣe búburú except one who does evil.
Idiomatic: "Stakes are not meant for people's legs, only for the legs of evildoers."
Meaning: Restraint is a penalty reserved for those who have earned it, not a general condition anyone might be put under.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One who has not committed an offense does not deserve punishment"
Notes: Ààbà names the wooden stocks used to immobilise a prisoner's legs, a real physical instrument rather than a figure of speech, which makes the proverb a statement about penal practice as much as about fairness. The restriction àfi, except, does the whole moral work: the stocks exist, and the proverb's only argument is about who may be put in them.
Literal: "Ìka tí ó ṣẹ̀ the-finger that offended ni ọba ń gé" is-what the-king cuts.
Idiomatic: "The finger that offends is the one the king cuts."
Meaning: Punishment lands on the specific offending member, not on the whole hand or the whole household.
Used when: Cited by Aborisade as the proverb expressing the principle that a Yorùbá ọba was expected to direct the consequence of an offense at the offender alone .
Notes: Aborisade's source, Adewoye's 1987 study of proverbs as legal thought, glosses this as an operating principle of precolonial Yorùbá punishment: the king who orders punishment is bound to aim it precisely, not broadly, and a ruler who punished indiscriminately could himself be rejected by his chiefs . Read beside entry 1, which states the same restriction from the side of who may be punished, this proverb states it from the side of the punisher's discipline in inflicting it.
Literal: Pamí-nkú obìnrín a-kill-me-and-see woman ṣorí bẹmbẹ́ hardens-her-head sọ́kọ against-her-husband.
Idiomatic: "A masochistic woman hardens her head against her husband."
Meaning: Deliberate, repeated provocation invites a harsher response than a single offense would.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Obstinacy only invites harsh punishment"
Notes: Pamí-nkú, kill-me-and-see, is a compressed defiant epithet naming a person who dares the consequence rather than avoids it, and the proverb observes rather than approves: escalation on one side draws escalation on the other. It sits uneasily beside entries 1 and 2, since it is the one proverb in this file that does not require the punishment to be proportionate, and the corpus does not reconcile the two positions.
Literal: Alákataḿpò-ó the-owner-of-a-crossbow bojú wòkè looks-with-his-face upward.
Idiomatic: "The person with a crossbow looks skyward." Owomoyela's own gloss: "An offender furnishes the means of his or her own punishment."
Meaning: The tool a wrongdoer carries to commit an offense is often what convicts or destroys him.
Used when: Owomoyela's usage note as quoted above .
Notes: The image is elliptical even by the standards of this collection: a crossbow owner scanning the sky is a hunter watching for a target, and Owomoyela's gloss reads the weapon itself as the instrument of the owner's eventual undoing, a reading that depends on context lost to the single line quoted here. Compare owe-weapons-defence-vulnerability, which treats weapons as objects capable of turning on their owners more literally.
Literal: Ìtà a ta olè the-terms with-which-we-sell the-thief là ńta adóhunmọ́ is-how-we-sell the-false-accuser.
Idiomatic: "The terms with which one sells the thief are the same as those one applies to the false accuser."
Meaning: A false accusation is punished exactly as theft is, because it steals the same thing: another person's standing.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The thief and the perjurer deserve the same fate"
Notes: Ta, to sell, is used here in the older sense of selling a wrongdoer into servitude as a judicial penalty, so the proverb is naming an actual historical punishment and extending it by equivalence rather than by metaphor. Pairing theft with false accusation treats them as the identical crime under two names.
Literal: Imú the-nose kì í tóbi is-never so-large kó gba ọ̀rọ̀ ẹnu sọ that-it takes the-word of-the-mouth to-speak.
Idiomatic: "The nose cannot get so big that it takes the speech out of the mouth."
Meaning: However much power a person accumulates, they cannot annex the rights that belong to someone else's proper role.
Used when: Owomoyela: "No one, however mighty, may usurp the rights of others"
Notes: The anatomical absurdity, a nose speaking, is the proverb's whole argument: some functions are fixed to their organ regardless of any other organ's size or standing, and the proverb applies that fixed allocation to authority generally, including the authority to punish, which belongs to the office charged with it and not to whoever happens to be strongest.
Literal: Ìṣẹ́ ibi the-suffering of-evil, èrè ibi the-profit of-evil á tán lẹ́ will end together.
Idiomatic: "The suffering that results from doing evil, the rewards for doing evil, will last until [they run out together]."
Meaning: Whatever a wrong deed gains its doer and whatever it costs him arrive on the same schedule and end together.
Used when: Owomoyela's usage note is not fully legible in the source consulted; the compiler reads it as a statement that ill-gotten gain and its punishment are yoked, so that the profit of wrongdoing cannot outlast its cost. Confidence on this reading: medium.
Notes: The pairing of ìṣẹ́, suffering, and èrè, profit, in a single clause with one shared verb treats them as a matched set rather than as sequential cause and effect, which is a harder claim than "crime does not pay": it says the pleasure and the price are bound together for their whole duration, not just at the final reckoning.
Literal: Ẹní dáríjiní one-who forgives ṣẹ̀tẹ́ ẹjọ́ deflates the-case.
Idiomatic: "The one who forgives takes the wind out of the case's sails."
Meaning: Forgiveness does not settle a dispute morally so much as it removes the material the dispute needs to continue.
Used when: Owomoyela: "To forgive is to be magnanimous"
Notes: Ṣẹ̀tẹ́ carries the sense of collapsing something inflated, so the image is mechanical: a case is a thing with pressure in it, and forgiveness is the puncture. Owomoyela prints a close variant at entry 3293 with identical wording and cross-references it explicitly to this entry , and a longer form at entries 3298 to 3299 develops the same claim (see entries 9 and 10 below).
Literal: Àfi ohun wé ohun comparing thing to thing, àfọ̀rràn wé ọ̀ràn comparing matter to matter; fi ọ̀ràn jì forgive the-matter ká lè yinni so-that we-can be-praised.
Idiomatic: "Recalling-similar-matters-of-the-past, recalling-similar-problems-of-the-past, forgive an offense and earn praise."
Meaning: Constantly measuring a fresh dispute against every past grievance is the habit forgiveness has to break, and breaking it is itself creditable.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should forgive and not keep recalling past offenses" See also entry 1554 in Owomoyela's collection, printed as a variant.
Notes: The double compressed opening, comparing-thing-to-thing and comparing-matter-to-matter, names the exact habit the proverb then forbids: cataloguing precedents rather than letting a matter close. Owomoyela cross-references this entry, printed in his collection at 3298, directly to the shorter form at 1554 (fi ohun wé ohun, fi ọ̀ràn wé ọ̀ràn; fi ọ̀ràn jì ká yìn ọ́), which carries the identical claim in fewer words .
Literal: À-fi-ọ̀rọ̀-wé-ọ̀rọ̀ the-habit-of-comparing-matter-to-matter ò jẹ́ does-not let kí ọ̀rọ̀ tán bọ̀rọ̀ a-matter end easily.
Idiomatic: "Allowing a current matter to remind one of similar matters in the past prevents a quarrel from ending easily."
Meaning: The precedent-cataloguing habit named in entry 9 is stated here as its own proverb, isolated from the praise-and-forgiveness frame.
Used when: Owomoyela glosses this as a restatement of the preceding entry .
Notes: Owomoyela prints entries 9 and 10 as a matched pair immediately adjacent to each other, the first ending in praise for the person who resists the habit and the second naming the habit alone without the reward, which suggests the shorter form may be the older or more basic saying and the praise clause a later elaboration. Confidence on that relationship: contested, since Owomoyela does not state which came first.
Literal: Ojú àánú the-eyes of-mercy ti fọ́ have gone-blind, tìkà ló kù only-the-wicked-one's remain.
Idiomatic: "Merciful eyes have gone blind; only wicked ones remain."
Meaning: A moment has arrived where clemency is no longer available and only harshness is left to answer with.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The time for mercy is past; now is the time for hardheartedness"
Notes: The proverb personifies mercy and cruelty each as a set of eyes and describes one going blind while the other remains sighted, which makes the shift from leniency to severity a matter of who is left able to see the situation rather than a change of policy. It is the sole proverb in this file that argues against continuing forbearance, and it sits as the hard limit against which entries 8 through 10 operate.
Literal: Má sọ ọ́ lófin do-not declare it as-law, òfin ní ń sọ ara ẹ̀ the-law is-what declares itself.
Idiomatic: "Do not lay down the law; the law will lay itself down."
Meaning: A wrongdoer does not need to be formally sentenced by anyone for the consequence of the wrong to arrive.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One does not need to be a vigilante for the wrongdoer to come to grief"
Notes: Òfin, law, is given agency here that it does not have in owe-justice-judgement-court, where law is administered by named officeholders; here it is a force that acts on its own, without an onídàájọ́ to invoke it. Read together, the two files show the corpus holding both a formal and an informal theory of consequence at once.
Literal: Láḿbè yàgbàdo lóko because-a-monkey cut-corn on-the-farm ká wá gbá ìbejì should-one slap a-twin lójú nílé in-the-face at-home?
Idiomatic: "Because a monkey cut some corn on the farm, can one slap a twin in the house?"
Meaning: Consequence must find the actual offender; visiting it on someone merely associated with the offender, however closely, is a category error.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One cannot punish a person for another person's crimes, however closely the two may be related"
Notes: Owomoyela's footnote explains that Yorùbá tradition holds an affinity between twins, ibejì, and the colobus monkey, so the proverb's two figures are linked by belief rather than by chance, which makes the wrongness of the substitution sharper: the twin is the closest thing to the monkey the tradition recognises, and the proverb still forbids punishing one for the other . This states from the household side the same principle entries 1 and 2 state from the side of the punisher.
Literal: Ọ̀nà ọ̀fun the-pathway of-the-throat, ọ̀nà ọ̀run the-pathway to-heaven: méjèèjì bákannáà ni wọ́n rí the-two-of-them are-alike as-they-are-found.
Idiomatic: "The pathway of the throat, the pathway to heaven: the two are very much alike."
Meaning: What is taken in through appetite and what leads to death travel the same route, so indulgence and mortality are proverbially adjacent.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One's throat may lead to one's death"
Notes: The claim is broader than punishment in the legal sense; it treats bodily appetite as carrying its own built-in consequence, the way owe-stomach-appetite-inner-person treats ikùn as a demanding power in its own right. It is included here because Owomoyela's own thematic placement puts it beside proverbs on correction going unheeded, and because it extends this file's argument that consequence can operate with no court, no punisher, and no forgiver at all.
Punishment in this file is disciplined by aim, not softened by degree. Entries 1, 2, 5, 6 and 13 all argue that a consequence must land on the specific party who earned it and nowhere else; none of them argues that the consequence itself should be light. This is a narrower and more exacting claim than mercy, and it is worth distinguishing from the second group of proverbs, which are about mercy properly speaking.
Forgiveness is treated as an act with a mechanical effect on a dispute, not as an emotional resolution of it. Entries 8, 9 and 10 all describe forgiveness in terms of what it does to the case, deflating it, ending it, rather than in terms of what it does to the forgiver's feelings. Entry 11 then states the hard limit: a period exists after which the corpus concedes mercy is simply unavailable. Taken together these four proverbs describe forgiveness as a practical, time-bound act rather than a permanent virtue, which fits the corpus's general treatment of proverbs as tools for particular occasions rather than as a fixed ethical system.
Two proverbs describe consequence operating with no institution behind it at all. Entries 12 and 14 remove the judge, the punisher, and even the forgiver from the picture, and each still asserts that a wrong or an excess produces its own result. Read against owe-justice-judgement-court, where the same corpus is unsparing about how often the human court fails, entry 12 looks like the position the tradition falls back on when the formal system cannot be trusted to deliver the consequence itself.
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