Òwe on Marriage, Husbands and Wives
Sourced Yorùbá proverbs about courtship, the bond between husband and wife, and the frictions and duties of the polygynous marriage itself.
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Sourced Yorùbá proverbs about courtship, the bond between husband and wife, and the frictions and duties of the polygynous marriage itself.
This file collects Yorùbá proverbs about the marriage bond itself: courtship and the go-between who arranges it, what a husband and wife owe each other once the match is made, and the particular strain of orogún, the co-wife relationship, in a polygynous household. File 10 in this section already covers the household a bride marries into and the visiting obligations owed to in-laws; this file stays closer to the pair, or the several wives, at the center of the marriage rather than the compound around it.
Aya is wife, ọkọ is husband, and orogún is the co-wife relation, structurally the most tested bond in a polygynous house. A recurring pattern below is that the proverbs are far more willing to be frank, and unflattering, about marriage than about family in general: several entries assume rivalry, inequality and grievance as ordinary facts of the institution rather than its failure modes.
None of the material below comes from the dedicated book sections used by files 10 and 11 (family, and children and parenthood), and none of it duplicates the marrying-out and marrying-in proverbs already published in file 10's entries 45 through 51, or the king's-divorced-wife proverb already published in file 18's entry 11. Marriage has no single dedicated section in Oyekan Owomoyela's Yoruba Proverbs (University of Nebraska Press, 2005); relevant proverbs are scattered across the book, most densely in "On humility," "On perspicaciousness," "On caginess," "On perseverance," "the fortunate person," "with the family," "within the community," "On human vulnerability," "On inequality," "On the right to human dignity," "On the right to patrimony and property," and "On just deserts"
Because the material is scattered, the compiler located candidates with keyword search across a full-text extraction of the printed book, then verified every candidate against a page image rendered directly from the book's PDF at 200dpi and read by eye. This second step matters: the specific digital copy of the book available to the compiler has a font-encoding defect in its extracted text layer (the printed book's embedded typeface used custom glyph composition for Yorùbá tone marks, which a plain text extraction fails to recover reliably, sometimes losing an accent and sometimes losing a whole letter). Reading the rendered page image bypasses that defect entirely. Every Yorùbá text, English translation and bracketed usage note below was transcribed directly from a page image this way, not from the corrupted text extraction, so the tone marking below is exactly as printed in Owomoyela's 2005 edition, without gaps or guesses .
The literal line in each record is by the compiler of this corpus, working from Owomoyela's printed Yorùbá. The used when line follows his own bracketed usage note, which the printed book supplies in place of a separate usage annotation, folded in immediately after the translation.
Literal: Bí ayé bá mojú ọkọ when the-wife has-known the-face-of husband alárìnnà a yẹsẹ̀ the-go-between will withdraw-foot.
Idiomatic: When the wife has got to know the husband, the marriage broker makes way. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Once the intermediary's task is accomplished, the intermediary removes themselves from the relationship they built.
Used when: Cited when someone who arranged or facilitated a match, a deal or an introduction should now step back and let the parties manage their own affair .
Notes: Alárìnnà, the go-between, names a real functionary in Yorùbá courtship, the person who carried proposals and arranged introductions between families, and the proverb states the office's natural term of service rather than merely observing a social nicety.
Literal: Oníyàwó ńgbéyàwó the-groom is-marrying his-bride Abídogun ńkó eèpè [a-name] is-carrying sand.
Idiomatic: The groom is welcoming his new bride; Abídogun is carrying sand. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: At the very moment one person is enjoying life's rewards, another nearby is stuck at hard, thankless labor.
Used when: Said of contrasting fortunes playing out side by side, one person's celebration next to another's drudgery .
Notes: The wedding is used as the emblem of enjoyed life precisely because it is public and celebratory, which sharpens the contrast with Abídogun's unglamorous sand-carrying named alongside it in the same breath.
Literal: Ọjọ́gèdé ò lẹ́wà the-poisonous-cassava has-no beauty lásán ló fara wéṣu it-is-for-nothing that-it resembles yam.
Idiomatic: The poisonous cassava has no attraction; it resembles a yam only in vain. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Superficial resemblance to something desirable does not make an imitation as good as the real thing.
Used when: Said of a suitor, a substitute or an imitation that looks the part but lacks the substance .
Notes: Owomoyela's usage note glosses it directly as no imitation being as good as the real thing ; the proverb is included here for its established use in assessing suitors and matches, though its force is general.
Literal: Aláṣejù the-excessive-one tí ńpọkọ ní baba who calls-husband father.
Idiomatic: Overzealous wife calls her husband "father." (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Carrying a mark of respect further than the relationship calls for turns deference into excess.
Used when: Said of a wife whose display of respect for her husband has become disproportionate, and by extension of anyone overdoing a proper courtesy .
Notes: Owomoyela's own gloss is exact: the wife who calls her husband "father" carries respect beyond reasonable limits, and one should not be overzealous in observing proprieties . The proverb assumes a baseline of real deference owed to a husband and marks only the excess as the fault.
Literal: Ojú kì í pọ́n ọkọ hardship does-not press a-husband kó má bá aya-a rẹ̀ sọ̀rọ̀ that-he not with his-wife speak.
Idiomatic: A husband can never be so bashful that he cannot speak to his wife. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: However reticent a person is by nature, some duties toward a spouse must be carried out regardless.
Used when: Said of a husband avoiding a conversation, an admission or a duty he owes his wife out of shyness or awkwardness rather than any real obstacle .
Notes: Ojú pọ́n ni, hardship pressing one, is the same idiom this corpus notes elsewhere for being hard pressed or desperate, and the proverb belongs to the same formula-family as the incest-prohibition proverb already published in file 10, entry 35: both use ojú kì í pọ́n to frame a class of things that pressure does not excuse.
Literal: Bí ó bá ti ń ṣe iṣu how it fares with the-yam ọ̀bẹ̀ ló yé the-knife is-what knows-it bí ó bá ti ń ṣèyàwó how it fares with the-wife ọkọ-ọ rẹ̀ ló mọ̀ her-husband is-who knows-it bí ó ti ń ṣe mí how it fares with-me ẹ bi ọ̀ré-ẹ̀ mi ask my-friend.
Idiomatic: How the yam feels is known only to the knife; how the wife feels is known only to the husband; for how I feel, ask my friend. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: True knowledge of a person's condition belongs to whoever stands closest to them, and the speaker claims that place for a friend rather than for kin.
Used when: Said to establish who is actually positioned to speak to a person's real state, deflecting an outsider's assumption .
Notes: The proverb builds a chain of three parallel intimacies, cutting knife and yam, husband and wife, friend and self, and closes on the friend, which quietly ranks chosen companionship alongside marriage as a bond of comparable interior knowledge.
Literal: Bí obìnrin bá dí méjì when women become two imú ọkọ a di odó the-husband's nose becomes mortar a ní wọn ò tún yí imú lu ọun mọ́ she-says they no-longer turn nose toward her again.
Idiomatic: When women number two, the husband's nose becomes a mortar; she [the first wife] says that he no longer rolls his nose in her direction. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: The favorite displaced by a newer favorite does not take the demotion gracefully.
Used when: Said of a person, most pointedly a senior wife, who resents being supplanted by someone newer in another's attention .
Notes: Owomoyela's own gloss: the erstwhile favorite never takes kindly to being supplanted by a new favorite . Rendering the husband's attention as a mortar, something heavy and immobile once it settles, makes the first wife's complaint about his nose "no longer turning" a complaint about a whole apparatus of attention having relocated, not merely a gesture withheld.
Literal: Bí ayá bá gbọ́ tọkọ if a-wife heeds that-of-husband wàhálàá tán trouble is-finished.
Idiomatic: If a wife does the husband's bidding, all problems disappear. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: A wife's compliance with her husband is presented as the condition for domestic peace.
Used when: Cited, according to Owomoyela's own note, to state that domestic bliss depends on the wife's complaisance .
Notes: Owomoyela attaches a footnote to this entry reading simply: "The sexism is not accidental" This corpus reproduces both the proverb and Owomoyela's footnote as printed rather than smoothing either away; the item stands as direct evidence of an asymmetrical norm the source itself flags rather than endorses without comment.
Literal: Bàbá laláàbò father is-protector ìyá lonírànwọ́ mother is-helper orogún nikú co-wife is-death.
Idiomatic: A father is a protector; a mother is a helper; a co-wife is death. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Of the three close relations named, only the co-wife is cast as an outright danger rather than a support.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: two women who share the same husband are deadly enemies .
Notes: The three-part list format, building two benign relations before naming the malign third, is a common Yorùbá rhetorical structure, and its force here comes from placing orogún in exactly the slot a reader expects another supportive figure to occupy.
Literal: Obìnrin tí kòì lórogún a-woman who does-not-yet have-a-co-wife ò tíì màrùn tí ńṣèun has-not-yet known which disease she-has.
Idiomatic: A woman who does not yet have a co-wife does not yet know what disease she has. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: A person's real flaws surface only once there is a rival positioned to expose them.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: until one has enemies, one seldom knows one's flaws .
Notes: Àrùn, disease, is used metaphorically for a personal flaw or weakness, and the proverb assumes the co-wife will actively bring that flaw to light rather than merely coexist with it, which is consistent with the more openly adversarial tone of the co-wife proverbs in this file.
Literal: Orogún kì í jogún a-co-wife does-not inherit orogún a-co-wife.
Idiomatic: Co-wives do not inherit from co-wives. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Two people whose interests genuinely diverge should be kept administratively and materially separate, even where they might seem to share a household.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: people with distinct interests should keep them distinct .
Notes: Jogún, to inherit, is literally to eat an inheritance, the same verb this corpus notes in file 10; the proverb's compactness, four words turning on a single repeated root, states a rule of property law for the polygynous household in the same breath as a general maxim about divided interests.
Literal: Bí a kò bá fi oògùn pa ọmọ ìyá ẹni if one has-not with medicine killed one's-mother's-child ọmọ bàbá ẹni kì í sá fúnni one's-father's-child does-not flee from-one.
Idiomatic: If one did not kill one's sibling by the same mother with poison, one's sibling by the same father does not flee. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Suspicion between half-siblings born of different co-wives falls away once there is no real cause to fear it.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: if one has done nothing to encourage them to do so, one's close relatives will not avoid one .
Notes: The proverb distinguishes ọmọ ìyá, a sibling by the same mother, from ọmọ bàbá, a sibling by the same father only, a distinction that exists specifically because co-wives' children grow up as siblings of unequal closeness within one compound, and it treats poisoning as the paradigm case of the wrong that would justify estrangement between them.
Literal: Bí orogún ìyá ẹni bá ju ìyá ẹni lọ if one's-mother's co-wife exceeds one's-mother ìyá là ńpè é mother is-what one-calls her.
Idiomatic: If one's mother's co-wife is older than one's mother, one calls her mother. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Seniority within the household commands the respectful title regardless of the blood tie underneath it.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: one shows the same respect to all elders as one would show to one's parents .
Notes: The proverb applies the general Yorùbá rule of age-based address inside the specifically fraught co-wife relation, and in doing so quietly overrides the rivalry the other entries in this section assume, showing that seniority etiquette runs even through a relationship otherwise cast as adversarial.
Literal: Bí nǹkán bá tán níle when things have finished at-home ọmọ ẹbọ a bọ́ síjọ́ the-acolyte drops into-dance àwọn tó wà níbẹ̀ a múra àti lọ those who are there prepare to leave.
Idiomatic: At the conclusion of a ceremony the acolyte commences to dance, and the onlookers prepare to make their exit. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: There is a proper moment to withdraw once a rite or occasion has run its course, and lingering past it is out of place.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: one should not hang around after one's business is done .
Notes: Included here for its established use, per Owomoyela's cross-reference, alongside a following proverb about knowing when to leave; the item is general in force rather than marriage-specific, but the compiler retains it because Owomoyela's own arrangement pairs it with courtesy-of-leaving material this file's courtship entries also touch.
Literal: Orúkọ mẹ́ta là ńpèyàwó three names is-how-one calls-a-new-wife Ọlọ́rùn-lélé [she-of]-the-slender-neck Ọlá-yọ́kọ-sílẹ̀ [she-who]-sneaks-off-leaving-the-husband-behind Ọlá-bọ́kọ-lọ [she-who]-goes-with-her-husband.
Idiomatic: A new wife has three names: Ọlọ́rùnlélé [She of the slender neck]; Ọláyọ́kọsílẹ̀ [She who sneaks off, leaving the husband behind]; Ọlábọ́kọlọ [She who goes with her husband]. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: A wife's future conduct, faithful or not, cannot be read off her appearance or her manner at the start of the marriage.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: one cannot predict the actions of a beautiful wife; she may sneak off with other men, but, again, she may remain faithful to her husband .
Notes: The three names are constructed epithets rather than names actually given, each built as a compact sentence in the manner of Yorùbá naming practice, and Owomoyela's own bracketed glosses inside the idiomatic line are his clarifications of what each compressed name states. The device of naming three possible futures for the same person, and declining to say which is true, keeps the proverb's judgment suspended rather than settled.
Literal: Ìyàwó la bá ṣùn the-wife is-who was made-love-to ọkọ ló lóyún the-husband is-who has-pregnancy.
Idiomatic: The wife was the one made love to, but it is the husband who got pregnant. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: The person only tangentially involved in a matter is making more fuss over it than the person actually and directly affected.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: the person directly involved in a matter does not make as much fuss as the person only tangentially involved .
Notes: The image is deliberately absurd, since it is anatomically the wife and not the husband who could be pregnant, and the joke is entirely in that impossibility: the husband's outsized anxiety is being mocked by making him the one who supposedly carries the consequence.
Literal: Ìyàwó ò fohùn the-bride does-not use-voice ó fójú she uses-eye.
Idiomatic: The bride does not speak, and she is also blind. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: A person newly arrived in a household or company should stay silent and simply observe until they have learned how things are done there.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: persons newly arrived in a place or a company should shut their mouths and open their eyes so that they learn the customs before speaking .
Notes: The paradox of a bride said to be both silent and sightless works because the proverb means she affects blindness as well as silence, withholding both comment and visible judgment; the newly married woman moving into her husband's compound is the paradigm case Yorùbá custom generalizes from, discussed further in file 10 on marrying into a household.
Literal: Obìnrin téérété yẹ ọkọ è níjọ́ ijó a-slender woman suits her-husband on-a-day of-dancing obìnrin gìdìgbá yẹ ọkọ è níjọ́ ẹbù a-hefty woman suits her-husband on-a-day of-yam-quartering bó bá ru ogórùn-ún ẹbù tán after-she has-carried a-hundred yam-pieces a kó kẹ́bé-kẹ́bé níwájú ọkọ she walks-smartly ahead-of husband.
Idiomatic: A slender woman is the joy of her husband on a day of dancing, but a hefty woman is her husband's joy on the day of yams quartered for planting; after she has toted a hundred yam pieces, she walks smartly [toward the farm] ahead of her husband. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: What makes a wife valuable shifts with the occasion, and physical labor capacity counts for as much as looks.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: good looks are not all that make a good wife .
Notes: The proverb deliberately pairs two opposite female builds against two different kinds of day, dancing against farm labor, refusing to rank one type of wife above the other and instead making usefulness contextual; the bracketed "toward the farm" is Owomoyela's own clarifying insertion.
Literal: Obìnrin tí yó fẹ́ẹ́ alágbára a-woman who will marry a-powerful-man ọkàn kan ní ḿmú one heart is-what she-holds.
Idiomatic: A woman who would marry a formidable man must have an unwavering mind. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Choosing to marry someone difficult or formidable requires settled resolve, not just attraction.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: once one has made a decision on an important matter, one should remain resolute .
Notes: The proverb treats marriage to a difficult husband as a decision requiring the same steadiness as any other high-stakes commitment, folding a marital choice into the corpus's broader proverbs on resolve rather than treating it as a separate domain of feeling.
Literal: Obìnrin bẹẹrẹ wives innumerable òṣì bẹẹrẹ problems innumerable.
Idiomatic: Innumerable wives, innumerable problems. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Taking on more wives multiplies difficulties in direct proportion.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: whoever adds wives to wives adds problems to problems .
Notes: The proverb's entire force is in its rhyme and repetition, bẹẹrẹ used twice against the paired nouns obìnrin and òṣì, a construction English can only flatten into a plain equation. It stands as the most direct one-line judgment on polygyny in this file, stated without the mitigating qualifications several other entries here carry.
Literal: Ẹní gbani láya whoever takes-from-one one's-wife ò ní kírú ẹni má rà has-no-power-to-stop one's locust-bean-seeds from-fermenting.
Idiomatic: The person who takes one's wife cannot stop one's locust-bean seeds from fermenting. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: An injury inflicted on a person, even the loss of a wife, has no power over that person's independent pursuit of their own affairs and destiny.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: a person who injures you cannot stop you from pursuing your destiny .
Notes: Owomoyela's footnote spells out the domestic logic behind the image: irú is the fermented condiment made from locust-bean seeds, ordinarily a wife's task to prepare, and the suggestion is that the wronged husband can still ferment his own irú and cook his own stew even without a wife to do it for him . The proverb turns a real domestic vulnerability, dependence on a wife's labor, into the very example it uses to deny that dependence has any final power over a person.
Literal: Ọgbọ́n ní ńpé kó tó ran ẹni wisdom takes-long before it rubs-off-on one wèrè kì í gbèé ran ẹèyàn foolishness does-not take-long to rub-off-on people wèrè Ìbàdàn ló ran ará Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ the-foolishness-of Ìbàdàn is-what rubbed-off-on the-people-of Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́.
Idiomatic: Only wisdom takes a long time to rub off on others; imbecility does not take long to affect others; it is the imbecility plaguing Ibadan people that rubbed off on the people of Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́. (Owomoyela, footnoted)
Meaning: Bad influence spreads between close associates far faster than good influence does.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: if you keep a person's company, you sooner or later will be infected with the person's bad habits .
Notes: Owomoyela's footnote gives the geographic logic: Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ is a town near Ibadan, closely related to it in culture and history, which is what licenses blaming one town's faults on proximity to the other . Immediately following this entry in the source, separated only by a semicolon-joined continuation, Owomoyela prints a related item about a suitor who wishes he had known a prospective wife's character before marrying her, "had I known": a situation that hurts like regret after the fact, offered as the general case this proverb about contagious bad influence is meant to explain.
Literal: Ṣátánì ló mú àtòsí ààfáà wá Satan is-who brought gonorrhea-of the-imam ẹléhàá kì í jáde the-wife-confined-in-harem does-not go-out ààfáà kì í yànlè the-imam does-not keep-an-illicit-lover.
Idiomatic: Satan is to blame for the imam's gonorrhea; the wife confined in the harem does not venture outdoors, and the imam does not keep an illicit lover. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: When neither spouse can plausibly be the source of a scandal, blame is displaced onto an outside agent rather than left unexplained.
Used when: Said, often drily, of an explanation reached for only because the obvious parties are protected from suspicion .
Notes: Ẹléhàá, the wife kept secluded, names a real practice of seclusion for some married women, and the proverb's logic depends on that seclusion being airtight enough to rule out infidelity on both sides, which is exactly what makes blaming the devil necessary.
Literal: Ẹni tó gba ọmọ ẹni whoever takes one's-daughter ò ní òun ò níí gba aya does-not say he will-not take wife.
Idiomatic: The person who makes off with one's daughter will think nothing of making off with one's wife. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Someone who has already shown no respect for one family bond will not respect another.
Used when: Said of an adversary who has proved ruthless once and should therefore be expected to overstep again .
Notes: The proverb ranks a daughter and a wife as parallel objects of the same kind of violation, which is a claim about how the offense is perceived rather than a claim that the two relations are otherwise equivalent.
Literal: Ọjọ́-ó pa alágundi rain caught the-agundi-seller iyán domi pounded-yam became-water ìyàwó ńretí agundi the-wife is-waiting-for agundi ọkọ sùn sóko the-husband slept at-the-farm.
Idiomatic: The agundi purveyor is caught in the rain, and the pounded yam becomes like water; the wife awaits agundi, but the husband spends the night on the farm. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Adverse circumstance can undo the best-laid domestic plan, leaving one spouse waiting on something the other cannot deliver.
Used when: Said of a plan, domestic or otherwise, wrecked by an outside setback neither party could control .
Notes: Agundi is a soft corn pudding, an everyday dish rather than a delicacy, which is what makes the failure so mundane and so exactly the kind of small disappointment marriage absorbs constantly; the husband's absence is explained by circumstance, not by neglect, which keeps the proverb in the register of misfortune rather than blame.
Literal: Ọ̀ṣọ́ ilé adornment confined-to-home ò jọ obìnrin lójú does-not appeal to-a-woman in-the-eye.
Idiomatic: Preening that is confined to the home does not appeal to a woman. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Display of one's attractions is not satisfying unless it happens where others can see it.
Used when: Owomoyela's own gloss: women always wish to go outside the home in order to advertise their beauty .
Notes: The proverb assumes rather than argues the point, presenting a wish to be seen as simply how women are, which places it among the more sweeping and least qualified generalizations about women in this file, alongside entry 8's flagged sexism.
Literal: A kì í ṣúpó one does-not inherit-the-wife-of aláàyè a-living-person.
Idiomatic: One does not inherit the wife of a living man. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Widow inheritance, a recognized practice, applies only once the first husband is actually dead.
Used when: Cited against attempting to seize a right or a possession while its owner is still alive to hold it .
Notes: Ṣúpó, the verb built into the proverb, is specific to the custom of a kinsman marrying a deceased brother's widow, so the proverb is not a general statement about property but a precise boundary condition on one particular institution, extended here to any premature claim on what still belongs to someone else.
Literal: Aya ọlẹ̀ wife of-a-lazy-person là ńgbà is-what one-may take a kì í gbọmọ ọlẹ̀ one does-not take child of-a-lazy-person.
Idiomatic: It is a lazy person's wife that one may take; one may not take a lazy person's child. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Even a person with a serious failing keeps rights over some things, and a spouse's tolerance for being taken from is not unlimited to every claim.
Used when: Cited to argue that some rights survive even a person's general uselessness, while others do not .
Notes: Owomoyela cross-references a companion entry making a related point about lazy people's residual rights . The proverb draws its line in an unexpected place, treating a wife as available in a way a child is not, which says as much about how the two relations were classed against each other as it does about laziness.
Literal: Ẹni tó gba ọ̀nà ẹ̀bùrú wá ta ojì a-man who took the-back-path came to-confront his-cuckolder wọ́n ní a kì í gba ọ̀nà ẹ̀bùrú wá ta ojì they said one-does-not take the-back-path to-confront one's-cuckolder ó ní ṣé a lè gba ọ̀nà ojúlé he asked whether one may take the-front-path wọ́n ní bẹ́ẹ̀ ni they said yes-indeed.
Idiomatic: A man who came on the sly to confront his cuckolder was told one does not confront one's cuckolder on the sly; he asked if one could do so frontally and was told, yes. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: A just grievance should be pressed openly and directly, not smuggled in by a roundabout approach.
Used when: Said to someone with a legitimate complaint who is being unnecessarily furtive about raising it .
Notes: The proverb stages a small exchange of dialogue and lets the correction do the arguing, a device this corpus notes elsewhere as a recurring feature of the genre; the wronged husband's grievance is treated as entirely legitimate, and the only fault found is in his manner of pursuing it.
Literal: Bí ìyàwó bá ṣojú ẹni if a-wife honors-one's-wishes in-one's-presence tó tún ṣẹ̀hìn ẹni and-also honors-one's-wishes behind-one ó ní láti ní èrè she must have reward tí yó jẹ níbẹ̀ that she-will-enjoy there.
Idiomatic: If a wife honors one's wishes in one's presence and also honors one's wishes in one's absence, some reward is certainly due her. (Owomoyela)
Meaning: Loyalty that holds up when unwitnessed is worth more than loyalty performed only for an audience, and it should be rewarded accordingly.
Used when: Said in praise of a spouse, or anyone, whose good conduct does not depend on being watched .
Notes: The proverb pairs directly against entry 15's suspended judgment on a new wife's future fidelity: where that entry declines to predict, this one specifies exactly what should follow once the question is settled in the wife's favor, reward rather than mere relief.
Three observations specific to this theme.
The corpus is markedly less sentimental about marriage than about family in general. File 10 treats the household as a legal person owed loyalty and defense; the proverbs collected here are far more willing to name marriage's frictions directly; entries 9, 10 and 20 state co-wife rivalry, mutual injury and multiplying trouble as plain facts rather than deviations to be corrected, and Owomoyela's own footnote on entry 8, calling its sexism not accidental, shows the compiler himself flagging rather than smoothing an asymmetrical norm found in the source.
Female judgment and resolve get real, if narrow, acknowledgment. Entries 18 and 19 both credit a wife with capacities beyond appearance, physical usefulness in one case, deliberate steadiness of mind in the other, which sits alongside the more skeptical entries, 15 especially, that decline to predict a wife's fidelity at all. Read together, the file does not resolve into either a romantic or a cynical position on marriage; it holds both at once, which this corpus's other files on Yorùbá proverb material note is the ordinary condition of the genre rather than an inconsistency needing correction.
Fault in a marriage is handled procedurally as much as morally. Entries 23 and 29 both concern the correct handling of a suspected wrong, an inexplicable scandal in one case and a confirmed cuckolding in the other, and neither one asks whether the wronged party is right to be aggrieved; the question in both is whether the grievance is being pressed in the proper manner. Entry 30 closes the file on the same procedural note, treating loyalty that survives outside observation as a distinct, better-evidenced case than loyalty merely performed, and specifying that it earns a reward rather than simply an absence of complaint.
Sourced Yorùbá proverbs about the household, the lineage, the father's house and the obligations that follow from being born into a particular family.
Sourced Yorùbá proverbs on what friendship actually obliges, how far trust can safely go, and what betrayal by an intimate looks like.
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.
Sourced Yorùbá proverbs about labour, the farm and the discipline of effort, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Twenty-four Yorùbá proverbs on oko (the farm) and igbó (the bush or forest), showing farm labour as the measure of a person's worth and the bush as the domain proper to animals and to danger.
Fifty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on character, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.