Olúrónbí and the Ìrókò
The tale of a woman who promises her first child to the spirit of the ìrókò tree in exchange for fertility, cannot pay, and is turned into a bird until her husband carves a wooden child to deceive the tree.
This is the tale of Olúrónbí, a wood-carver's wife who joins the women of her village in begging the spirit of the ìrókò tree for children, and who promises, alone among them, her first child. The child is born and is the most beautiful of all, and she cannot give it up. It is among the best-known Yorùbá tales still in circulation, surviving as a children's song independent of the narrative.
Two versions are set out here, and they differ in a way worth reading closely: an English narrative recorded by M. I. Ogumefu in 1929 that ends with the child recovered , and a Yorùbá song text published in a peer-reviewed article in 2023 from a named informant, where the tale ends with the child lost .
The tale as Ogumefu records it
In a certain village no children had been born for many years, and the people were greatly distressed.
At last all the women of the village went together into the forest, to the magic tree, the ìrókò, and implored the spirit of the tree to help them.
The Ìrókò-man asked what gifts they would bring if he consented to help them, and the women eagerly promised him corn, yams, fruit, goats and sheep. But Olúrónbí, the young wife of a wood-carver, promised to bring her first child.
In due course children came to the village, and the most beautiful of all was the one born to Olúrónbí. She and her husband so greatly loved their child that they could not consent to give it up to the Ìrókò-man.
The other women took their promised gifts of corn, yams, fruit, goats and sheep; but Olúrónbí took nothing to propitiate the tree.
Alas, one day as Olúrónbí passed through the forest, the Ìrókò-man seized her and changed her into a small brown bird, which sat on the branches of the tree and plaintively sang:
The Yorùbá is not given. Ogumefu prints the song in English only .
Not available; Yorùbá text not provided in source .
Translator: M. I. Ogumefu
One promised a sheep, One promised a goat, One promised fruit, But Oluronbi promised her child.
When the wood-carver heard the bird's song, he realised what had happened, and tried to find some means of regaining his wife.
After thinking for many days, he began to carve a large wooden doll, like a real child in size and appearance, and with a small gold chain round its neck. Covering it with a beautiful native cloth, he laid it at the foot of the tree. The Ìrókò-man thought this was Olúrónbí's child, so he transformed the little bird once more into a woman and snatched up the child into the branches.
Olúrónbí joyfully returned home, and was careful never to stray into the forest again.
The song in Yorùbá
A different telling, in which the person who makes the vow is not Olúrónbí's own but a woman consulting a herbalist named Olúwéré, is published by Bamidele Omolaye of Obafemi Awolowo University from an informant recorded in 2022 . The song there survives in Yorùbá.
Solo: Oníkálukú n jèjé ewúré, ewúré, ewúré, Oníkálukú n jèjé àgùntàn, àgùntàn bòlòjò Olúrónbí n jèjé omo rè, omo rè Apónbíepo Olúrónbí oo Chorus: Janin - janin, Ìrókò janin-janin Solo: Olúrónbí oo Chorus: Janin - janin, Ìrókò janin-janin
- Oníkálukú each-person n jèjé is vowing ewúré a-goat
- àgùntàn bòlòjò a-sheep, well-fed
- Olúrónbí n jèjé omo rè Olúrónbí is vowing her child, Apónbíepo the-one-red-as-palm-oil (the child's name)
- Janin-janin an ideophone; Omolaye renders it "mighty-mighty"
- Ìrókò the ìrókò tree
Translator: Bamidele Omolaye
Solo: Each person vows a goat! goat! goat! Each person vows sheep, a well-fed sheep, Olúrónbí vows her child, her child Apónbíepo Olúrónbí oo Chorus: Mighty-mighty Ìrókò tree, mighty mighty Solo: Olúrónbí oo Chorus: Mighty-mighty Ìrókò tree, mighty mighty
The article prints its Yorùbá with grave and acute accents but no subdots at all, as can be verified by searching the article: omo rè stands for ọmọ rẹ̀, and so on . The text is reproduced as printed and flagged rather than corrected, per the rule applied throughout this section.
Two things in the Yorùbá do not survive the translation. The child's name, Apónbíepo, means the one who is red or ripe as palm oil, a name describing a beautiful complexion, and in the song it is the last word of the line that names what was vowed, so the child is identified by her beauty at the exact moment she is promised away. Ogumefu's English version keeps the beauty as narration ("the most beautiful of all") and loses it from the song.
Second, the chorus is the audience's, and what the audience sings is not sympathy for Olúrónbí. It is Janin-janin, Ìrókò janin-janin, a praise of the tree's might. The listeners take the side of the creditor. The corpus notes as analysis that this is a considerable part of the tale's force in performance and is invisible in any English narrative version: the room is not lamenting, it is chanting the power of the thing that is owed.
What the two versions differ on
The other party. Ogumefu has the spirit of the ìrókò tree, an "Ìrókò-man." Omolaye's informant has a named herbalist, Olúwéré, who at the end disappears into a tree with the child . The tree is present in both but its relationship to the person taking the vow is different.
Who else is involved. In Ogumefu all the women of a barren village go together, which is what makes Olúrónbí's promise conspicuous: everyone else offers livestock. In Omolaye's version the setting is one woman's desperation, and the song still lists what "each person" vows, so the comparative structure survives in the song even where the narrative has narrowed.
The ending, which is the substantive difference. In Ogumefu the wood-carver carves a decoy child, the tree is deceived, Olúrónbí is restored, and she goes home. In Omolaye's telling the child Apónbíepo is taken and not recovered: "this was how Olúrónbí lost her child" .
The corpus does not adjudicate between them. Both are attested, and a tale that ends in restitution and a tale that ends in loss are teaching different things. Omolaye states what his version is told for: that children should learn not to make a pledge beyond their ability, and not to be hasty in making a vow . Ogumefu's version, with its ingenious husband, converts the same warning into a story about a debt that can be settled by craft.
What the tale does
The mechanism is that a vow is a real obligation and the tale treats it as enforceable regardless of what the person meant at the time. Olúrónbí is not wicked. She is desperate, and she promises the only thing she has that is worth more than a goat, at a moment when she does not have it and cannot imagine having it. The tale's whole moral weight sits in the gap between the vow and the child: what was abstract when promised becomes a specific beautiful girl, and the debt does not adjust.
The second mechanism is exposure by song. Olúrónbí is turned into a bird that sits in the tree singing her own case, and the song is a public accounting: this one promised a sheep, that one a goat, and I promised my child. She is not silenced, she is made to broadcast. owe-shame-reputation-being-seen collects the material on public knowledge as sanction, and the device is the same one that operates in alo-buje-the-slender, where a woman is destroyed by a fact being announced rather than by the act itself.
In Ogumefu's version the singing is also what saves her, because her husband hears it and understands. The corpus notes as analysis that the punishment and the rescue run through the same channel: she is condemned to say what she did, and saying it out loud is what brings help.
The carved decoy deserves a note. The husband is a wood-carver, and the tale gives him a solution made of his own trade: a child-sized doll with a gold chain, wrapped in fine cloth. owe-carver-potter-maker collects the proverb material on makers. Whether the deception is presented as admirable or merely as effective, Ogumefu does not say; her closing line is about Olúrónbí being careful never to stray into the forest again, which suggests the danger is understood as continuing.
The song's survival
Olúrónbí is exceptional in this section for still being sung. The Yorùbá text circulates as a children's song independent of any full narrative telling, and both a scholarly source and popular collections carry versions of it. The corpus records the scholarly one above and notes the popular circulation without quoting from unattributed sites.
This is worth marking because yoruba-alo describes the genre's displacement by television and phones, and the survival pattern here is instructive: what has lasted is the chorus, detached from the tale. A song can live as a song after the evening that carried it has gone.
Variants
Beyond the two above, the tale appears in the inventory of yorubatales.com as "Olurombi" , and a children's book by Lady Kofo Ademola, Olurombi, is recorded in that site's bibliography (Mudhut Books / Malthouse Press / Gilspar, 1994) . Neither has been consulted by this compiler and no text is drawn from either.
Performance context
Evening telling, treated in yoruba-alo; the musical setting of Omolaye's recordings, in compound duple metre on a hemitonic pentatonic scale with staff notation, is described in his article . Note that this song is in solo-and-chorus form rather than strict call-and-response: Omolaye classifies it as the antiphonal type where the lead raises the song and the chorus answers, as against the call-and-response type used in the three Ìjàpá tales he prints .