The Owu lineage's cloth and temperament oríkì, two conflicting versions of the Iresa lineage text, and a plain account of the lineage material this corpus found and could not verify.
This file closes the orílẹ̀ set with the Ọ̀wu lineage's two documented texts, the Ìrẹsà (Àrẹ̀sà) lineage's two independently sourced and materially conflicting texts, the Ẹlẹ́rìn and Ilá-Ọ̀ràngún lineages, and a direct account of one lineage's oríkì this corpus's research turned up and is not presenting, with the reason stated.
Aremu Okikiolahan Omo Olowu Oduru Ajifewesere Okunrin meta Okunrin ogun Ara oru Ki i ranro Awi-i- menu kuro Ni towu
Presented without tone marks, as printed in the source .
Aremu, Okikiolahan. Descendant of Owu Oduru. One who has vast knowledge of herbs. Valorous man. Man of war. The Owu man does not avenge, but complains repeatedly.
Translated by Oluwole Coker, who published this same text and translation twice, in a 2012 and a 2015 study of oríkì's persistence in Yoruba popular folksongs . Both publications carry identical Yoruba and identical English, and this corpus treats them as one text with two citations rather than as independent corroboration by different sources.
What it says. A named individual, Arẹ́mú Ọkíkiọláhàn, praised for herbal knowledge and martial valour, closing with a stated ethical claim about Ọ̀wu character generally: grievances are spoken openly rather than avenged in secret.
Significance. The closing proverb functions as a piece of collective self-characterisation attached to an individual's praise, the pattern oriki-typology notes as a routine crossing of the orílẹ̀/ìnagijẹ boundary: a personal oríkì here doubles as a claim about the whole Ọ̀wu people's temperament.
Performed. Royal court ceremonies, civic assemblies, the annual Ọdún Ọmọ Olówù ancestral festival, family milestones, and praise-singing occasions .
A bimo l'owu a f'osege pon-on Iwo osege, emi osege Osege o je a m'oloro l'owu!
Presented without tone marks, as printed in the source .
An Owu child is ever born into a family of osege wearers. You wear osege just as I myself do. Osege cloth makes it difficult to identify the wealthy in Owu.
Translated by Chief Oladipo Yemitan, from a study titled "Some Owu Terminologies" / Memoirs of Baapitan Owu .
What it says. A specific woven cloth, òṣègè, is claimed as so universal within Ọ̀wu that it erases visible distinctions of wealth: rich and poor alike wear it, so cloth cannot be used to tell them apart.
Significance. Read beside the first Ọ̀wu text's claim that grievances are spoken openly rather than nursed in secret, this second text adds a complementary claim about social levelling through dress. Together the two documented Ọ̀wu texts in this harvest describe a lineage identity built on directness and a form of egalitarianism, distinct in emphasis from the martial-conquest register more common elsewhere in this section.
Performed. Civic celebrations, historical narrations, family naming ceremonies, and cultural gatherings of Ọ̀wu descendants .
Notes. The source (a named chief writing memoirs, hosted on an Ọ̀wu kingdom community website) is not a peer-reviewed scholarly publication, though the author and his title are named; confidence on this text is medium accordingly.
This lineage's oríkì appears twice in the harvested material, from two different, apparently unrelated sources, and the two versions differ enough in content and in what survives of them that this corpus presents both rather than choosing one.
Èmi l'ọmọ Arẹ̀sà Ọmọ Arẹ̀sà b'árìn-ọlá Ọmọ alẹ́po ní Mòde Ṣe-ní-n-ṣe-ní l'ó ń bí Ìrẹsà nínú B'ọ́lẹ̀ ò b'úpo l'ó ń ya Mòde lára Arẹ̀sà Dúdú l'ẹ̀gbọ́n, pupa l'ábúrò Ọjọ́ inú bí ọmọ Dúdú l'ó bínú di pupa.
I am the offspring of Aresa, offspring of Aresa who walks with dignity and wealth, offspring of those rich in palm oil in the Mode quarter; retaliation and provocation provoke the anger of the Iresa person; if a sluggard fails to extract palm oil, it disturbs the citizens of Mode; the Dark Aresa is [the elder, and the account continues past the harvested excerpt].
Translator not individually named; the source, "Àwọn Oríkì Orílẹ̀" and associated cultural archives, is attributed jointly to Adeboye Babalola and unspecified "Yoruba Cultural Archives," 1967 .
What it says. A genealogical split within the lineage itself, Ìrẹsà-Dúdú (Dark) as the elder branch and Ìrẹsà-Pupa (light-complexioned) as the younger, explained through a closing image of anger turning the Dark ancestor's complexion red, alongside claims to palm-oil wealth and a stated ethic of reciprocity ("do to me as I do to you").
Performed. Naming ceremonies, civic festivals, chieftaincy installations, and social celebrations .
Emi lomo Aresa Omo Aresa barinola Omo alepo ni mode Seni nseni lo nbi Iresa ninu Bole o bu epo lo nya mode lara Aresa Dudu legbon pupa laburo Ojo inu bi omo Dudu lo binu di pupa.
I am the descendant of Aresa, child of Aresa who walks with nobility, child of those rich in palm oil in the Mode quarter. Provocation and retaliation provoke the anger of the Iresa person; if a sluggard fails to draw palm oil, it upsets the people of Mode. Dark Aresa is the elder and the fair-complexioned is the younger; the day anger seized the Dark child was the day he turned red with rage.
Presented without tone marks and without an English translation, exactly as printed in the source, a compiled folk-poetry listing titled "Apere Oriki Orile - Itan Nisoki" . The literal gloss and English translation fields in the underlying research record for this text are both explicitly recorded as not available.
What can be said. The Yoruba wording of version two is functionally identical to version one, differing only in the presence or absence of diacritics, which suggests the two harvested records may ultimately trace to the same underlying circulating text, encountered by the two source compilers in different states of transcription. This corpus does not merge them into one entry, because version one carries an attribution (however loosely individually credited) that version two entirely lacks, and because presenting them separately keeps visible the fact that identical Yoruba wording circulates online in both a translated and an entirely untranslated state.
Variants. Version two's source additionally lists further circulating epithets not glossed in either version: Arẹ̀sà Àjèjè, Ọmọ Òkun Ọ̀yẹ, Ọmọ Ọba Tínjẹ́pò, Ọmọ Ọba Tínjoyin , reported here as unglossed variant material rather than translated.
Notes. Neither source for this lineage meets this corpus's preferred standard of a named scholar with a verifiable publication. Both are retained, rather than cut outright, because the Yoruba text itself is substantial, consistent across both sources, and the gap (translated versus untranslated) is itself informative about how this material actually circulates. A reader should treat both versions as unverified against a scholarly original and weight them accordingly.
Ẹ̀rìn moje ọmọ saaja, Ọmọ eléwé ladogba òróró maro, Ẹ̀rìn wagunwagun. Ewá w'Ẹ̀rìn logun eniti yíò wá Ẹ̀rìn logun kowa àpò ide kolowa ọfà, Bàbá kòníbon ajíperin nílé...
Ẹ̀rìn, offspring of Sáájá, descendant of the balanced and upright leaf, Ẹ̀rìn arrayed for battle. Come see Ẹ̀rìn in warfare; whoever marches against Ẹ̀rìn in war must bring a quiver of brass and fetch arrows. The father who has no gun, yet wakes to hunt elephants in his own domain.
English translation. Not recovered. The source provides an extensive Yoruba text (continuing well past the excerpt above, into an episode of a felled tree blocking a road and hunchbacked, lame and deaf woodcutters sent to clear it) but no corresponding English rendering .
What can be said. This is presented as Yorùbá text only, per the corpus rule against back-constructing a translation a source did not provide. The literal gloss above covers only the opening lines the underlying research record glossed; the remainder of the harvested Yoruba text, the felled-tree episode, is not glossed at all in the source material and is not reproduced here without a gloss, since an untranslated and unglossed block of text would add length without adding anything a reader could use.
Significance, so far as it can be stated without a full translation. The lineage is named for Erin-Ilé / Erin-Ọ̀sun, and the fragment that is glossed asserts a military and hunting identity (elephant hunting without firearms, arrayed for war) consistent with the martial register common across this section's orílẹ̀ material generally.
Performed. Not stated in the source beyond its general classification as lineage oríkì associated with the Odùmọsa dynasty of Erin-Ilé.
Notes. This text illustrates, more starkly than any other in this section, the corpus's translation rule in practice: a real, substantial, apparently coherent Yoruba text exists, and this corpus declines to supply the English it lacks rather than produce a translation with no named translator and no verifiable methodology behind it.
Ìlá Òràngún, ọmọ ògbóye, Ìlá ladé yín, ẹ ò kòwó radé rí, Ẹ̀yin lọmọ ògbóye gbọ́lá, Ìlú ẹrú kò gbọdọ̀ wọ̀ bẹ́, ìwọ̀fà ẹ gbọdọ̀ sùn,
Ìlá Òràngún, offspring of the one who understands royal wisdom, in Ìlá your crown belongs, you never bought your crown with money, you are the children of wisdom who inherit glory and wealth, a domain where slaves must tread with caution and indentured servants must not slumber, [and the account continues past the harvested excerpt].
Translator not named; the source is a web compendium, "Oriki Ilu Ila-Orangun," hosted at a general Yoruba cultural reference site .
What it says. A claim of unbought, inherited royal legitimacy at Ìlá, paired with lines about the discipline expected of enslaved and pawned persons within the town, material this corpus reports without softening because the source prints it and because 19-warfare and 12-towns treat the historical institution of pawning and slavery in nineteenth-century Yorubaland directly.
Performed. Not independently stated beyond general classification as a compendium of Yoruba lineage praise poetry .
Notes. Confidence on this text is low to medium: no translator is named, the source is a general web compendium rather than a scholarly publication, and the harvested excerpt is truncated. It is retained because the Yoruba text is substantial and the content, while unverified against a second source, is internally consistent with documented Ìlá-Ọ̀ràngún royal history.
The harvested research for this section included a lengthy Yoruba text and English translation for the oríkì of the Alápà lineage (Èkù-Àpá, Agbamu, Omido and related settlements), centred on a python and viper totemic taboo. This corpus is not presenting that text. The reason: the source field for that record names no author, no publication, and no year, and the source URL given is a bare Facebook root address with no identifiable post, author or date behind it. Per the brief governing this section, a record whose source cannot be confirmed is cut rather than presented with a weak caveat. Readers researching Alápà lineage totemic practice should treat this as an open gap rather than assume this corpus has covered it, and should look to a properly attributed published source, which this harvest did not turn up.
Lineage and town-of-origin oríkì for four major Yoruba groups, including two variant texts for Ọ̀fà shown side by side rather than merged.
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.
Royal and lineage oríkì for four eastern and central Yoruba kingdoms, including a rare text naming a specific carver rather than only royalty or warriors.
A row for every lineage, town and divinity this corpus has looked for oríkì about, marking which carry a full three-layer text in a named file, which exist only as an unverified harvest record, and which are open gaps.
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.
How oríkì is built from independent units rather than narrative sequence, and the specific mechanisms, tonal, structural, and referential, that make it resist translation.