The two rarest classes of orikì in this section, praise addressed to a person's heavenly spirit companions and praise addressed to an animal, presented with honest limits on both.
oriki-typology introduces ẹgbẹ́ and ẹranko as the two subject classes of oríkì least represented in this section's harvested research, one record each. This file gives both their full treatment, and is explicit about why each carries a different confidence level.
Ẹgbẹ́ Ọ̀gá Ògo! Akiikaa! Aseegee! Muso! Ẹ̀yin ẹlẹ́kẹ̀jì ọ̀run, ẹ má jẹ́ kí a rí ìtìjú, ẹ wá dídí gbé ọmọ yín léke.
Egbe, master of glory! Wonderful! Victorious! Hail! You heavenly companions and astral peers, do not allow us to suffer disgrace; rise to deliver and elevate your earthly counterpart.
Translated jointly, credited as "Will Coleman / Isese Religious Archive," from a source titled "Yoruba Spiritual Cosmology and Egbe Orun Tradition" (2022) .
What it says. A direct petition to the ẹgbẹ́ ọ̀run, the company of spirit companions Yoruba cosmology holds to have accompanied a person from heaven before birth and to remain in ongoing relationship with them, asking specifically for protection from disgrace and for active elevation of the earthly person.
Significance. This is the single text in this harvest addressed to a subject class that is neither a lineage, a town, an individual by name, nor a public òrìṣà, but a private metaphysical relationship each person is held to have. 04-cosmology treats the ẹgbẹ́ ọ̀run concept itself and the related concept of orí (destiny-head); this text is the liturgical material that concept generates in practice, addressed in the second person exactly as oriki-poetics-and-untranslatability describes as characteristic of oríkì generally: spoken to the subject, not narrated about it.
Performed. Ẹgbẹ́ propitiation rituals, annual Ẹgbẹ́ Day festivals, consultations for émèrè/àbíkú spiritual distress (children believed to be repeatedly dying and returning), and naming rites .
Performer. Ẹgbẹ́ priests and priestesses, initiated devotees, and Ifá babaláwo .
Variants. The source notes distinct invocations for separate ẹgbẹ́ branches: Ẹgbẹ́ Ìyálóde, Jagunjagun, Baálẹ̀, and Asípà , not independently glossed here.
This text carries a lower confidence rating than most material in this section's core files. The source is an open online courseware listing rather than a peer-reviewed publication, and while a translator is named jointly with an archive credit, this corpus has not been able to independently verify the underlying transcription against a second source. It is retained because the ẹgbẹ́ ọ̀run concept itself is well documented in the wider scholarship this corpus draws on elsewhere, and because a text illustrating the concept in liturgical use, even at medium-to-low sourcing confidence, is more informative to a reader than silence on this subject class entirely. Readers should weight this text below the Babalola, Barber, Verger, Idowu and Beier material that anchors most of this section.
Erin lábá-owó, erin abikúnlẹ̀ pelemọmọ, a rìn gberigberi bí olórí ogun.
O elephant pouch-filled with money, O monstrous elephant whose kneeling shape descends broad like a mountain, who walks majestically like a generalissimo.
Translated by Adeboye Babalola, from The Content and Form of Yoruba Ijala (1966) .
What it says. The elephant is praised for three linked qualities compressed into a single short line: economic value (association with wealth, presumably via ivory and meat), sheer physical mass (the kneeling image), and martial bearing (walking like an army's commander).
Significance. 13-oral-literature/02-ijala.md documents that ìjálá contains an extensive body of praise addressed to individual animal species, describing their characteristics, habits and dangers, professional knowledge in poetic form; this text is a specific example of that body of material, and it is also, per oriki-typology, the clearest documented case in this section of ẹranko material's productive afterlife: the same "walks like an army leader" register recurs, transformed, in the Aláàfin's ìnagijẹ oríkì presented in oriki-typology, which borrows animal imagery (horse, rooster, leopard) for identical rhetorical effect. This text is the source register that royal borrowing draws from.
Performed. Hunters' gatherings (àpèjọ ọdẹ), funeral ceremonies for deceased guild hunters, and Ògún guild ceremonies, by hunters' guild bards and palace chanters .
Performer note. Babalola's monograph is this section's highest-confidence source overall, credited independently across the Ògún, orílẹ̀ and other material in this section; this elephant text shares that same firm evidentiary basis.
Variants. The source notes variation across dialectal ìjálá repertoires including references to Erin-Àjànàkú, a praise-name form of "elephant" also used as a personal name element , not independently glossed here.
Ẹgbẹ́ and ẹranko sit at opposite ends of this section's confidence range while sharing a formal feature: both address a non-human, non-institutional subject directly, the way a person or a lineage would be addressed. oriki-typology treats this as evidence that oríkì's basic grammar, direct second-person address building outward through epithet, operates independently of what kind of thing is being addressed. A spirit-companion collective and a forest animal receive, formally, the same kind of speech a king or an ancestor receives; what differs across this section's files is not the grammar of praise but the confidence this corpus can place in each transcription's fidelity to what a Yoruba performer actually said.
The complete classification of oríkì by subject, orílẹ̀ through eranko, with a worked text for each kind and the boundary cases that show the categories are not airtight.
Six documented Ògún oríkì texts from four different scholarly sources, showing the deity's seven manifestations, his contradictions, and a chanter's personal claim on him.
The hunters' chant associated with Ògún, its vocal manner, the ìjálá artist and how he is judged, the contest setting, and what the chant does as self-portrait and as praise of animals.
Three lineage oríkì from Karin Barber's Okuku fieldwork, plus the Olúfọ́n dynasty and the Ìkòyí warrior lineage whose praise obliges the chanter to include its own dishonour.
How oríkì is built from independent units rather than narrative sequence, and the specific mechanisms, tonal, structural, and referential, that make it resist translation.
The occasions on which oríkì is actually chanted, the royal awakening and market-day forms, and how payment shapes what a performer says, illustrated with texts the genre files in this section do not carry.