Òwe on the Stranger, the Guest and Hospitality

This file collects Yorùbá proverbs about the àlejò, the visitor, guest or stranger, and the onílé or baálé, the householder who receives them. Yorùbá social structure treats hospitality as a defined relationship with obligations running in both directions rather than as a simple kindness: the host owes protection, food and discretion, and the guest owes deference, a known departure date, and restraint from presuming too much on the household that has taken them in. The asymmetry is real and proverbs state it plainly, because an àlejò in a Yorùbá town of the era these sayings describe had no independent standing. Without kin nearby to vouch for them, a stranger's safety and reputation depended entirely on the household or town that had agreed to receive them.

That dependency is what makes the theme distinct from the broader family and community material collected elsewhere in this section. A guest is, by definition, someone temporarily inside a household or town they were not born into, which is also why several of the proverbs below use àlejò figuratively, for anything that is present but does not belong: an affliction on the body, a corpse not yet settled into the grave, a difficulty encountered by someone unfamiliar with the terrain. The literal glosses keep that double sense visible wherever it appears. Àjèjì and àjòjì, both meaning stranger or foreigner, appear alongside àlejò in several entries and are glossed separately where the distinction matters.

How this file is sourced

Every entry below is drawn from Oyekan Owomoyela's Yoruba Proverbs (University of Nebraska Press, 2005), the full 5,235-proverb collection 2. Unlike files 10 and 11 in this section, which drew primarily on Owomoyela's separately digitised web excerpt The Good Person, this file's source is the printed book itself, consulted because that web excerpt covers only the book's Part One and the entries below are scattered across several of the book's six major parts: the dedicated section "On relationships with strangers," but also material within "On humility," "On perspicaciousness," "On perseverance," "On the fortunate person" and the closing "Miscellany" and "Truisms" sections, wherever a hospitality or stranger image happened to illustrate that part's broader theme. Each entry number given (185, 262, 324, and so on) is Owomoyela's own numbering from the printed book, reproduced so the reader can locate the entry directly.

An initial pass at this file worked from a plain-text extraction of the book's PDF, which turned out to have a serious defect: the book's original typesetting used a custom font for Yorùbá tone marks, and the text-extraction process failed to preserve most grave and acute pitch accents, in some cases dropping entire letters rather than only an accent. Rather than reproduce that degraded text, every entry below has instead been read directly from page images rendered from the same PDF at high resolution, which bypasses the font-extraction defect entirely and reproduces the printed page exactly, tone marks included. Where an entry's number is followed by no further comment, its Yorùbá text below has been verified this way against the printed page. Owomoyela's own English translations and bracketed usage notes are reproduced as given; the literal line in each record is the compiler's own, built to expose the metaphor the idiomatic line smooths over.

Even with page images, the material for this theme is genuinely thinner than for file 10's family material or file 13's friendship material, because Owomoyela's book has no single chapter devoted to it: the dedicated "relationships with strangers" section runs to only nine entries (3454 through 3462), and the remainder here were located by searching the full text for àlejò, àjèjì, àjòjì, onílé and baálé across all six parts of the book and then checking each candidate's page image individually. Thirty proverbs met the sourcing bar this way. That is within this corpus's usual range for a file in this position, though it required drawing on a wider span of the book than a single-section file like 10 or 13 needed.

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The host's duty and the guest's

1. Baálé àlejò ni baba àlejò.

Literal: Baálé àlejò the-householder-of a-visitor ni baba àlejò is the-father of-the-visitor.

Idiomatic: The visitor's host is the visitor's father. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: For the duration of the stay, the host stands in the place of a parent, with a parent's responsibility for the guest's welfare.

Used when: Cited to remind a host of the weight of the role, and to explain why a guest defers to their host as they would to a senior relative 2.

Notes: Owomoyela cross-references two further entries making the same equation elsewhere in the book (his entries 3263 and 3326), which suggests this identification of host with father was a stock formula rather than a single coinage. The word baálé itself is built on ilé, house, the same root that does triple duty across this corpus's family proverbs (see file 10), so the sentence trades on the householder's title already containing the notion of domestic authority before the comparison to a father is even made.

Source: 2, entry 3456

2. Àlejò kì í lọ kó mú onílé dání.

Literal: Àlejò kì í lọ a-visitor does-not depart kó mú onílé dání and take the-householder along-with-them.

Idiomatic: The visitor does not take his or her leave and take the host along. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A guest's departure is theirs alone; the household and its head remain behind.

Used when: Owomoyela's own usage note reads this as a statement about facing one's destiny alone, extending the literal image of leave-taking into a general claim that no one can be accompanied all the way through their own fate 2.

Notes: The proverb works as literal etiquette and as figurative statement about solitude at once, and Owomoyela's gloss favours the figurative reading without discarding the literal scene that makes it work.

Source: 2, entry 185

3. Àlejò kì í pìtàn ìlú fónílé.

Literal: Àlejò kì í pìtàn ìlú a-visitor does-not narrate-the-history of-the-town fónílé to-the-householder.

Idiomatic: The visitor does not recount the history of the town for the host. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A newcomer does not lecture the people who already possess the knowledge in question.

Used when: Said to someone presuming to instruct a person on matters that belong to the other person's own domain 2.

Notes: Owomoyela's note generalises the proverb to never presuming to know more than the custodian of knowledge 2. The image is precise about what a guest cannot claim: not general ignorance, but specifically the town's own history, which belongs to those born into it.

Source: 2, entry 186

4. "Máa lọ, àlejò" kì í ti ẹnu onílé wá.

Literal: "Máa lọ, àlejò" "keep-going, visitor" kì í ti ẹnu onílé wá does-not from the-mouth-of the-householder come.

Idiomatic: "Stranger, it is time you departed" does not come from the mouth of a host. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: However long a visit runs, dismissing the guest outright is not the host's role to perform.

Used when: Cited on the asymmetry of hospitality: visitors are expected to know when they have overstayed their welcome, and a host is expected to remain gracious even when the guest fails to read that signal 2.

Notes: Owomoyela's usage note names both sides of the obligation explicitly: the burden of ending a visit properly falls on the guest's own judgment, not on the host's patience running out in words 2.

Source: 2, entry 3460

5. Bí ojú onílé bá mọ́ tíntín, tí ojú àlejòó tó gbògbò, onílé ní ńṣe ọkọ àlejò.

Literal: Bí ojú onílé bá mọ́ tíntín if the-eyes-of-the-householder are small tí ojú àlejòó tó gbògbò while the-visitor's-eyes reach huge onílé ní ńṣe ọkọ àlejò the-householder is-who acts-as master of-the-visitor.

Idiomatic: Even though the host's eyes are tiny, and the guest's eyes are huge, it is the host who holds sway over the guest. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Whatever the visible difference in stature or force of personality between the two, authority in the house belongs to the one whose house it is.

Used when: Said to settle a dispute about precedence between a physically or socially imposing guest and a modest host, in the host's favour 2.

Notes: Ọkọ, elsewhere in this corpus the ordinary word for husband, is used here in its wider sense of master or one who holds authority over another; the proverb is not about spouses. The eye-size contrast is a concrete image for an imbalance of apparent power that the proverb then overturns.

Source: 2, entry 262

6. À ńgira sè fún àlejò jẹ, ó ní "Ilé yìí mà dùn láé!"

Literal: À ńgira sè fún àlejò jẹ one is-straining-oneself to-cook for a-visitor to-eat ó ní he says "Ilé yìí mà dùn láé!" "this-house indeed is-sweet forever!"

Idiomatic: One extends oneself to feed a visitor, and he remarks, "What abundance exists in this home!" (Owomoyela)

Meaning: The guest sees only the plenty put on display for them and has no way to judge the strain the household actually absorbed to produce it.

Used when: Said of a visitor praising a household's generosity without any sense of what that generosity has cost the people extending it 2.

Notes: Owomoyela's own usage note is explicit that the visitor has no way of knowing the extent to which the host incurs debt for the visitor's benefit. The gap between what hospitality visibly offers and what it actually costs a household is the same gap several proverbs in file 10 explore from the giving household's side.

Source: 2, entry 3454

7. "Sún m'ọ́hùn-ún, a féé ṣorò ilé-e wa," kì í jẹ́ kálejò di onílé.

Literal: "Sún m'ọ́hùn-ún" "move-yourself over-there" a féé ṣorò ilé-e wa we are-about-to perform-rites of-our-house kì í jẹ́ kálejò di onílé does-not allow the-visitor to-become a-householder.

Idiomatic: "Move aside; we are about to perform some secret rites of our lineage" keeps a sojourner from becoming a member of the household. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A household can extend hospitality freely while still keeping its most intimate business closed to the person it is hosting.

Used when: Said of a household that draws a firm line around what a long-term guest may witness or take part in 2.

Notes: Owomoyela's usage note reads this as a deliberate reminder to the visitor that they do not belong 2. The proverb is the clearest statement in this file that hospitality and membership are two different things, and that extending one is not a promise of the other; see entry 8 (Ará ilé ẹni ò ṣeun) for the same boundary stated from the opposite direction.

Source: 2, entry 3462

8. Onífunra àlejò tí ńtètè ṣe onílé pẹ̀lé.

Literal: Onífunra the-owner-of-attentiveness àlejò tí ńtètè ṣe onílé pẹ̀lé a-visitor who quickly does the-householder gently.

Idiomatic: The excessively attentive visitor extends hospitality greetings to the host. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A guest who is too eager to please oversteps into gestures that are properly the host's to make.

Used when: Said of a newcomer or subordinate who assumes a role that belongs to someone senior to them 2.

Notes: Owomoyela's usage note generalises this beyond hospitality entirely, to anyone assuming another person's functions 2. Read against entry 4, the pair shows the corpus holding both halves of the same courtesy: the host must not rush the guest out, and the guest must not rush to act like the host.

Source: 2, entry 499

9. Onílé ńjẹ èso gbìngbindò; àlejò-ó ní kí wọ́n ṣe òun lọ́wọ́ kan ẹ̀wà.

Literal: Onílé ńjẹ èso gbìngbindò the-householder is-eating fruit of-the-gbìngbindò-tree àlejò-ó ní the-visitor says kí wọ́n ṣe òun lọ́wọ́ kan ẹ̀wà that they should-do him a-hand of black-eyed-peas.

Idiomatic: The host is eating the fruits of the gbìngbindò tree; the visitor asks to be treated to some black-eyed peas. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A visitor should size their requests to what their host can actually spare, not to what they themselves might prefer.

Used when: Said when someone leans on a benefactor for more than the benefactor's actual circumstances can bear 2.

Notes: Owomoyela's note widens the proverb beyond hospitality to any relationship with a benefactor experiencing hardship 2. The specific foods matter: the gbìngbindò fruit is what is actually on offer, and asking instead for black-eyed peas is asking for something the host was never shown to have.

Source: 2, entry 501

10. Baálé àìlówó ni àlejò àìlówó.

Literal: Baálé àìlówó a-householder without-money ni àlejò àìlówó is a-visitor without-money.

Idiomatic: An unsolicitous host makes for a visitor with no deference. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A host who fails to extend proper hospitality forfeits the deference a guest would otherwise owe them.

Used when: Said in explanation of a visitor's coldness or presumption toward a host who has not made them welcome 2.

Notes: Owomoyela's own footnote observes that baálé means both landlord and husband, a double sense also load-bearing in file 12's marriage material. The literal gloss keeps "without money" for àìlówó, but Owomoyela's idiomatic rendering reads the word as reaching further, to a more general failure of generosity or attentiveness than poverty alone.

Source: 2, entry 818

11. Ọbẹ̀ tó dànù, òfò onílé, òfò àlejò.

Literal: Ọbẹ̀ tó dànù the-stew that spilled òfò onílé loss of-the-householder òfò àlejò loss of-the-visitor.

Idiomatic: The stew that spilled is a loss to the host and a loss to the visitor. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Some misfortunes are shared automatically by everyone present, host and guest alike.

Used when: Said of a setback that falls on an entire gathering rather than singling out one party to blame 2.

Notes: Owomoyela's own gloss reads it as a claim of universal scope: the destruction of anything valuable is a loss to everybody 2. The proverb assumes the meal was to be shared, which is why the spill is counted against both parties rather than only against whoever was carrying the pot.

Source: 2, entry 3218

12. Omi, baálé àlejò.

Literal: Omi water baálé àlejò householder of-the-visitor.

Idiomatic: Water: the lord and master of the visitor. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Whatever else is offered, water is the first and most basic obligation owed to anyone received into a home. Owomoyela's own bracketed usage note expands the line as "water is the ultimate thing with which one welcomes a visitor."

Used when: Cited to state, in the fewest possible words, that the offer of water is the floor beneath which hospitality does not fall 2.

Notes: At three words, this is the shortest entry in this file and is built entirely on apposition, water is stated to be the host, with no verb at all, a construction Yorùbá tolerates and English cannot reproduce without inserting a verb the original does not have.

Source: 2, entry 5175

13. A rí èyí rí ni tonílé; a ò rí èyí rí ni tàlejò; bónílé bá ní ká jẹ́ é tán, àlejò a ní ká jẹ́ é kù.

Literal: A rí èyí rí one has-seen this before ni tonílé is what-belongs-to-the-householder a ò rí èyí rí one has-not seen this before ni tàlejò is what-belongs-to-the-visitor bónílé bá ní ká jẹ́ é tán if-the-householder says let-us eat it up àlejò a ní ká jẹ́ é kù the-visitor will-say let-us leave some.

Idiomatic: "Its like has been seen before" is what the host says; "No one has ever seen its like before" is what the guest says; if the host says that we should empty the plate, the guest should argue for leaving a little. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Host and guest are each expected to play a scripted, opposite part at table: the host performs modesty about the meal's abundance, and the guest performs restraint in the face of it.

Used when: Cited to describe, and to prescribe, the choreography of a shared meal between host and visitor 2.

Notes: This entry appears in the book's opening section on humility rather than in its dedicated strangers section, evidence that the etiquette it describes was treated as an instance of a wider virtue rather than as hospitality-specific advice. Owomoyela's note reads the mismatch as functional: a host who minimises the spread and a guest who declines to finish it are both, in their opposite ways, being properly modest.

Source: 2, entry 61

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The stranger's standing

14. Àjòjì tó bú baálè-é di ẹrù tan.

Literal: Àjòjì tó bú baálè-é a-stranger who insulted the-chief di ẹrù tan has-packed load finished.

Idiomatic: A stranger who insults the chief has packed his load. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A person with no local standing who provokes the most powerful figure in the vicinity has effectively arranged their own expulsion or ruin.

Used when: Said as a warning against picking a fight with authority from a position of no protection 2.

Notes: Owomoyela's note calls this authoring one's own disaster 2. Àjòjì, stranger or foreigner, is distinguished here from àlejò by emphasis: àlejò is the received guest, while àjòjì stresses the person's foreignness and consequent lack of any local claim to protection, which is exactly the vulnerability the proverb turns on.

Source: 2, entry 3455

15. Omi àjèjì tó wọ̀lú, píparé ní ńparé.

Literal: Omi àjèjì strange water tó wọ̀lú that enters-a-town píparé ní ńparé disappearing is-what it-does.

Idiomatic: Whatever strange water enters a town inevitably disappears. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A newcomer's distinctiveness does not survive contact with an established place; it is absorbed or erased by local custom.

Used when: Said of a newcomer to a community who must adapt to its ways or face disaster 2.

Notes: The image of water is apt because water takes the shape and, eventually, the taste of whatever it flows into, so the "strange water" cannot remain identifiably itself for long. Àjèjì, the third of this file's three near-synonyms for stranger, is used interchangeably with àjòjì across the book without a documented difference in sense.

Source: 2, entry 3461

16. Àjòjí lójú, ṣùgbọ́n kò fi ríran.

Literal: Àjòjí lójú a-stranger has-eyes ṣùgbọ́n kò fi ríran but does-not use-them to-see-with.

Idiomatic: A stranger has eyes, but they do not see. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A newcomer can be looking directly at a situation and still fail to read it correctly, because the meaning is not visible without local knowledge.

Used when: Said of an outsider whose read on a local matter is confidently wrong 2.

Notes: Owomoyela's note is precise about the mechanism: a stranger's eyes are blind to the intricacies of their new surroundings, not to the surroundings themselves 2. The proverb pairs closely with entry 27 below (the fork in the road), both locating the stranger's disadvantage in missing context rather than in any personal deficiency.

Source: 2, entry 744

17. Àjòjì ò réni jẹ́rìí-i rẹ̀.

Literal: Àjòjì ò réni a-stranger does-not have-anyone jẹ́rìí-i rẹ̀ to-bear-witness for-them.

Idiomatic: The stranger has no one to bear witness for him or her. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A person without local kin or standing has no one positioned to vouch for them if their word is challenged.

Used when: Owomoyela's usage note states this plainly: a stranger cannot hope for vindication against an indigene 2.

Notes: This is the starkest statement in the file of the practical, legal disadvantage of being an àjòjì, and it sits in the book's section on material fortune rather than on strangers specifically, grouped with proverbs about what money and connections do and do not buy. Read together with entry 16, the two proverbs show the corpus recording both a norm of hospitality toward strangers and a clear-eyed account of how little formal protection that norm actually provided.

Source: 2, entry 2813

18. Àlejò bí òkété là ńfi èkùrọ́ lọ.

Literal: Àlejò bí òkété a-visitor like a-giant-rat là ńfi èkùrọ́ lọ is-what one uses palm-nuts to-give.

Idiomatic: It is a visitor like a giant rat to whom one offers palm nuts. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: What a host offers a guest should match what that particular guest is actually suited to receive.

Used when: Owomoyela's note reads this as counsel to approach other people as their stations dictate 2.

Notes: Òkété, the giant rat, is a real forager of palm nuts, so the image is naturalistic rather than absurd: the choice of gift fits the recipient's own nature, which is the whole point being generalised to human guests.

Source: 2, entry 759

19. Àlejò tó bèèrè ọ̀nà kò níí sọnù.

Literal: Àlejò tó bèèrè ọ̀nà a-visitor who asks the-way kò níí sọnù will-not get-lost.

Idiomatic: A stranger who asks the way will not get lost. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Admitting unfamiliarity and asking for help is what actually protects a newcomer, not pretending to already know.

Used when: Owomoyela's note reads this as counsel to be willing to admit one's ignorance and seek direction, and cross-references his entry 73, which makes the identical claim about a person in general rather than a visitor specifically 2.

Notes: The cross-reference to entry 73 is telling: the book treats the stranger's situation as simply the sharpest case of a general rule about asking for help, rather than as a special etiquette that only applies to visitors.

Source: 2, entry 760

20. Ẹni tí a ò fẹ́ nílùú kì í jó lójú agbo.

Literal: Ẹni tí a ò fẹ́ nílùú a-person whom one does-not want in-town kì í jó does-not dance lójú agbo in-front-of the-assembly.

Idiomatic: A person not welcome in the town does not take a turn in the dancing circle. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Someone whose presence a community has not accepted should not put themselves forward within it.

Used when: Said to counsel an unwelcome person, or a person in a group that has made its unwelcome plain, to keep a low profile rather than press for inclusion 2.

Notes: Owomoyela pairs this with an adjacent proverb making the identical claim about a person denied a turn at riddling, and the pairing suggests the agbo, the public assembly or dancing circle, functioned as a recognised stage for testing whether a person's presence in the town was accepted.

Source: 2, entry 324

21. Ará ilé ẹni ò ṣeun; èèyàn ẹni ò sunwọ̀n; a ò lè fi wé àlejò lásán.

Literal: Ará ilé ẹni ò ṣeun the-people-of-one's-house have-not done-well èèyàn ẹni ò sunwọ̀n one's-own-people are-not good-natured a ò lè fi wé àlejò lásán one cannot compare-them to-a-stranger for-nothing.

Idiomatic: The members of one's household have not done well by one; one's relatives are not good-natured; yet one cannot liken them to mere strangers. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Whatever grievance a person holds against their own kin, kin still outrank strangers as a matter of category, not of merit.

Used when: Said to check someone who, in the heat of a family grievance, threatens to treat their relatives as though they were nobody to them 2.

Notes: The proverb is the clearest statement in this file of the structural gap between kin and àlejò: it does not claim relatives are kinder or more reliable than strangers, only that the two categories are not interchangeable even when the relatives in question have behaved badly. A parallel proverb, naming a real city where this norm of kin outranking strangers visibly failed in practice, is recorded in this corpus's file 16 on community and cooperation rather than repeated here.

Source: 2, entry 2819

22. Àlejò tí kò wá là ńpa àgbà àgùntàn dè.

Literal: Àlejò tí kò wá a-visitor who did-not come là ńpa àgbà àgùntàn dè is-for-whom one kills a-mature sheep for.

Idiomatic: It is a visitor who fails to show up in whose honor one killed a large sheep. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: A claim invoking a guest as its justification is safest when made about a guest who was never actually there to contradict it.

Used when: Owomoyela's usage note reads this as being about a safe lie, one that no one is positioned to disprove 2.

Notes: The absent guest is not the proverb's real subject; the sheep, and the boastful account of hospitality supposedly given for it, is. This is the one entry in this file where àlejò functions as an alibi rather than as a person with real standing in the exchange, inverting the vulnerability the surrounding entries describe: here it is the invisible guest who is exploited, not the visible one.

Source: 2, entry 4709

23. Àlejò tó fòru wọ̀lú, "Igí dá!" ni yó jẹ.

Literal: Àlejò tó fòru wọ̀lú a-visitor who by-night enters-a-town "Igí dá!" "a-stick has-fallen!" ni yó jẹ is-what he-will eat.

Idiomatic: A visitor who enters the town in the middle of the night will have "What a misfortune!" for dinner. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Arriving at the wrong hour makes hospitality impossible to extend, whatever the household's actual willingness.

Used when: Owomoyela's note draws the plain lesson: one should not visit when circumstances will make proper hospitality impossible 2.

Notes: The proverb complements entry 4 above: where that entry constrains the host's patience, this one constrains the guest's timing, and together they frame hospitality as something both parties can fail through simple bad judgment about when, not only how.

Source: 2, entry 4710

24. Àṣẹ̀ṣẹ̀wọ̀lú àlejò, jolojolo lojú ńṣeni.

Literal: Àṣẹ̀ṣẹ̀wọ̀lú àlejò the-just-now-entering-town visitor jolojolo lojú ńṣeni restlessness in-the-eyes is-what-affects-one.

Idiomatic: On first entering a town, the stranger's eyes are restless. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Unfamiliarity with a place shows up first and most visibly in a newcomer's watchfulness.

Used when: Owomoyela glosses this plainly: the eyes of a stranger do not rest on anything for long 2.

Notes: The ideophone jolojolo, restlessness, does the descriptive work the English "restless" only approximates; Owomoyela's translation states the meaning but cannot carry the sound-picture the reduplicated Yorùbá form supplies.

Source: 2, entry 4761

25. Onílù-ú ò fẹ́ kó tú; abánigbé ló ńṣe é béè.

Literal: Onílù-ú ò fẹ́ kó tú the-native-of-the-town does-not want it to-break-up abánigbé ló ńṣe é béè the-one-who-lives-with-one is-who does it thus.

Idiomatic: The native of the town does not wish it to break up; it is the doing of the sojourner. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Someone with no permanent stake in a place or venture may act to undermine it in ways someone rooted there never would.

Used when: Owomoyela's note generalises this to any venture: people with no stake in it might wish to destroy it; not so those with a stake in it 2.

Notes: Abánigbé, the one who lives alongside one, is here rendered "sojourner" to capture that the word marks someone resident but not native, the same structural position occupied by àlejò elsewhere in this file, only extended from a household guest to a town's temporary resident.

Source: 2, entry 3213

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Àlejò as figure of speech

26. Òbò ò ṣéé ṣe àlejò.

Literal: Òbò the-vagina ò ṣéé ṣe àlejò is-not-fit-to be-made a-guest-occasion.

Idiomatic: The vagina is not a thing for showing hospitality. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Some goods are not to be shared with a visitor merely because hospitality generally calls for generosity.

Used when: Owomoyela's usage note glosses this as a statement that good things are not good for all purposes 2.

Notes: Owomoyela prints this proverb in the book's Part One without softening its subject matter, and this file reproduces it as printed rather than substituting a euphemism, in keeping with this corpus's rule against correcting a source silently. The proverb works by taking hospitality's normal expectation of open-handed sharing and applying it to a domain where the expectation obviously fails, which is the whole of its logic.

Source: 2, entry 1093

27. Àlejò orí ni kókó.

Literal: Àlejò orí a-visitor-of the-head ni kókó is a-lump.

Idiomatic: The lump is only the head's visitor. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: An affliction, however established it seems, is not a permanent feature of the person carrying it.

Used when: Owomoyela glosses this as counsel to learn to live with afflictions, framing a swelling or lump as a temporary occupant of the body rather than as part of it 2.

Notes: This is the clearest figurative extension of àlejò in the file: the word's core sense, someone present without belonging, is applied to a physical condition rather than to a person. The move only works because the corpus's proverbs elsewhere are so insistent that a guest's presence is understood to be temporary by definition (see entries 2 and 4 above); the lump borrows that same expectation of eventual departure.

Source: 2, entry 1980

28. Òkú ọdún mẹ́ta-á kúrò ní àlejò-o sàréè.

Literal: Òkú ọdún mẹ́ta a-corpse of-years three á kúrò ní àlejò-o sàréè has-ceased-to-be a-visitor of-the-grave.

Idiomatic: A three-year-old corpse is no longer a newcomer to the grave. (Owomoyela)

Meaning: Time in a place, even an unwelcome or unchosen one, eventually converts a newcomer's standing into something settled.

Used when: Owomoyela glosses this alongside a companion proverb about a sojourner becoming a native in time, as an image of persistence eventually being rewarded with acceptance 2.

Notes: The grave is an unusually stark setting for the file's recurring idea, seen literally in entries 1 through 13, that a guest's status is temporary and unsettled: here the proverb uses the same vocabulary of visiting to describe the opposite process, a stranger's gradual absorption into a place until they are no longer marked as new to it.

Source: 2, entry 2284

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Reading these proverbs

Three observations specific to this theme.

The obligation is genuinely reciprocal, but the two sides are not symmetrical. The host owes protection, sustenance and the patience to let a guest leave in their own time (entries 1, 4, 6, 9, 12, 23); the guest owes deference to house rules already settled before their arrival, restraint in what they ask for, and an accurate sense of when their welcome has run its course (entries 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 23). Neither side is coerced by the other in these proverbs. The host cannot be shamed into ejecting a guest, and the guest is expected to read the signal and act on it unprompted, which places the heavier practical burden on the visitor even while the heavier moral burden of hospitality sits with the host.

Hospitality as a norm coexists with a hard-headed account of the stranger's actual legal and social standing. Entries 1, 6, 9 and 13 describe a household bending over backward for a guest; entries 17 and 20 state flatly that a stranger has no one to vouch for them and may simply not be wanted at all. This file's entry on Ìbàdàn (removed here as a duplicate of file 16) makes this point about strangers sometimes outdoing kin most sharply; entry 21 states the same friction as the norm being violated. The corpus is not resolving this tension; it is recording both the ideal and the friction the ideal generated in practice.

Àlejò is productive as a metaphor precisely because its literal sense is so exact. A lump on the head, a corpse recently buried, an affliction that outstays no welcome of its own: entries 26 through 28 borrow the word's core meaning, present but not yet belonging, and apply it to something that is not a person at all. That the metaphor travels so easily is itself evidence of how sharply Yorùbá speech distinguishes the guest's temporary, contingent presence from the settled belonging of kin, a contrast several of the literal entries state directly and the figurative ones restate by analogy.