Òwe on the Town, the City and the Village
Sixteen Yorùbá proverbs on ìlú, the town, showing it as the site of public reputation, of collective liability for disruptive individuals, and of the deference owed to place.
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Sixteen Yorùbá proverbs on ìlú, the town, showing it as the site of public reputation, of collective liability for disruptive individuals, and of the deference owed to place.
Ìlú is town, and it is the largest unit of settled place these proverbs treat as a single social actor: it has elders, it can be split into factions, it can be defended or endangered by one reckless member, and it judges anyone who enters it. This file collects sixteen proverbs in which the town itself, rather than the household or the road, is the operative setting. Where a proverb names a specific historical town, that detail is preserved rather than smoothed into a generic "town," since it is often the evidence that dates or localises the saying.
Literal: Àgbààgbà ìlú the-elders of-the-town ò lè péjọ cannot assemble kí wọ́n ó jẹ ìfun òkété to eat the-intestines of-a-bush-rat, àfi iyán àná except stale pounded-yam.
Idiomatic: "The elders of the town will not assemble and eat the intestines of a bush rat, only stale pounded yams."
Meaning: People act according to what befits their station, even when the alternative is objectively humbler fare than they might otherwise take.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "People should behave in ways that befit their station"
Notes: The town's elders, as a collective public body, are the standard-bearers whose behaviour models what is appropriate to status; the proverb uses their hypothetical collective refusal as its evidence.
Source: Owomoyela 120, with Owomoyela's cross-reference to entry 2891 on the same theme.
Literal: A-wọlú-má-tì one-who-enters-a-town-and-is-not-disgraced, ìwọ̀n ara-a rẹ̀ ló mọ̀ knows his-own-measure.
Idiomatic: "One-who-enters-a-town-and-maintains-his-or-her-reputation does so because he or she knows his or her place."
Meaning: Avoiding disgrace on entering a new town is a matter of self-knowledge, knowing one's own proper measure, not luck.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Self-knowledge guarantees one's reputation"
Notes: The town functions here as the testing ground for self-knowledge specifically: a stranger's conduct in an unfamiliar town is treated as the clearest evidence of whether they actually know their own place in a social order.
Source: Owomoyela 217.
Literal: Ẹni tí a ò fẹ́ nílùú the-person not wanted in-the-town kì í jó lójú agbo does-not dance in-sight-of the-assembly.
Idiomatic: "A person not welcome in the town does not take a turn in the dancing circle."
Meaning: A person unwelcome in a community should not press for a visible, public role within it.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "A person not wanted in a group should keep a low profile" Owomoyela cross-references a companion proverb, entry 323, making the identical point about riddling turns .
Notes: The dancing circle is a public, communal event in which participation is a form of belonging, and this proverb uses exclusion from it as the visible marker of a person's unwelcome status in the town as a whole.
Source: Owomoyela 324; compare 323.
Literal: (Compressed from Owomoyela's continuous prose translation; the Yorùbá text spans several clauses in the source as printed and is reproduced here as Owomoyela gives it.)
Idiomatic: As above.
Meaning: People treat a stranger according to the impression made on entry; a poor first appearance in a town invites correspondingly poor treatment.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "People treat one the way one presents oneself"
Notes: This proverb is presented with lower confidence than the others in this file because the source text as extracted runs across a page break and the opening clause with its full Yorùbá could not be cleanly recovered from the working extraction; the idiomatic English and the meaning are secure, from Owomoyela's printed translation, but the literal gloss above is necessarily partial. Confidence: medium.
Source: Owomoyela, entry near 385-386 in the collection's numbering.
Literal: "Mbá wà ní Ọ̀yọ́, mà ti so ẹṣin" "were-I in Ọ̀yọ́, I-would already own a-horse"; àgùntàn-an rẹ̀ á níye nílùí his-sheep should have-value in-this-town.
Idiomatic: "'Were I at Ọ̀yọ́ I would own a horse by now'; he should have numerous sheep to his name in this town."
Meaning: What a person has actually accomplished in their present town is the real evidence of what they could accomplish anywhere else, not an imagined alternative.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "What a person has accomplished in his or her present circumstances is a good indication of what the person has the potential to do in more favorable circumstances"
Notes: Ọ̀yọ́ is named as the imagined place of greater opportunity, and the proverb corrects the boast by pointing back to the speaker's demonstrated record in the actual town where they live, treated further as a real historical polity in 12-towns/02-oyo.md.
Source: Owomoyela 433.
Literal: Ó tọ́ kí eégún léni lóko àgbàdo it-might-be-fitting for-a-masquerader to-chase-one off-a-corn-farm, èwo ni ti Pákẹ̀tẹ́kẹ̀ láàrin ìlú? what-then of Pákẹ̀tẹ́kẹ̀ in-the-middle-of-town?
Idiomatic: "It might be seemly for a masquerader to chase one off a corn farm, but it is not seemly for Pákẹ̀tẹ́kẹ̀ to chase one in the middle of town."
Meaning: An authority's exercise of power is judged appropriate or not by where it occurs; a licence proper to one setting is not automatically proper in another.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "A person who is in no position to exercise authority over another should not presume to do so"
Notes: The proverb draws a sharp contrast between the farm, where a masquerader's traditional licence to chase people is accepted, and the town centre, where the same act by a lesser figure (Pákẹ̀tẹ́kẹ̀) is out of place, an explicit statement that place itself governs what conduct counts as legitimate.
Source: Owomoyela 459, with Owomoyela's note 74.
(Cross-referenced from owe-orisa-tradition-speech entry 4, where this proverb, Owomoyela 612, is fully documented as evidence of the boundary drawn between sacred precinct and ordinary town space. Not repeated here.)
Literal: Àlùsì ẹsẹ̀ tí ń fa koríko wọlú disaster-causing legs that drag weeds into-town.
Idiomatic: "Disaster-causing legs [that] drag weeds into town."
Meaning: A person who will bring disaster on others behaves like a foot that carelessly drags weeds along into town.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "A person who will bring disaster on others behaves like the wayward foot that drags weeds into town"
Notes: The image treats the town as a clean, ordered space into which contamination, here figured as weeds, is dragged by careless individual conduct, a variant of the "town as vulnerable collective" logic seen in several other entries here.
Source: Owomoyela 762.
Literal: Aṣiwèrè èèyàn an-imbecile lòjò ìgboro ń pa is-who the-rain of-the-open-town soaks.
Idiomatic: "It is an imbecile who is soaked in the rain in the middle of a town."
Meaning: Only a fool fails to use an available refuge when caught by misfortune in the middle of a populated place.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Only an imbecile ignores a refuge when one is available"
Notes: Ìgboro, the open town centre or public square, is the site where shelter should be most available, verandas and shopfronts included, which sharpens the foolishness the proverb condemns: getting soaked there, of all places, is inexcusable.
Source: Owomoyela 790. Also attested at .
Literal: Aṣiwèrè èèyàn an-imbecile ní ń gbèjà ìlú-u rẹ̀ is-who defends his-town.
Idiomatic: "Only an imbecile gets into a fight in defense of his town."
Meaning: Defending the town's cause as an individual matter is foolish; the town's concerns are collective, not any one person's private battle.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "A town's cause is no business of any one individual"
Notes: This proverb is a sharp counterpoint to entry 1's picture of the town's elders as a dignified collective body: here the same collective, "the town," is invoked to argue that no single person should take its defence upon themselves personally, a caution against overreach on the community's behalf.
Source: Owomoyela 791. Also attested at .
Literal: Bí ilú bá dá sí méjì if the-town splits into-two, tọba ọ̀run là ń ṣe it-is-the-heavenly-king's-will one-does.
Idiomatic: "If the town is split in two, one does the will of the heavenly king."
Meaning: In a town riven by factional division, one should side with the party God would favour rather than pick a side on other grounds.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "If there is a division in one's group, one takes the side God would favor"
Notes: This proverb documents a real, recurring political fact of Yorùbá town life, that towns did split into rival factions, and it offers a religiously framed principle for navigating that split rather than a purely pragmatic one.
Source: Owomoyela 855.
Literal: Ní ìlú tí a ò ti fẹ́ ẹyẹlé in-a-town where one does-not welcome pigeons, adìẹ yóò ṣọ̀wọ̀n níbẹ̀ chickens will-be scarce there.
Idiomatic: "In a town that does not welcome pigeons, chickens will be very scarce there."
Meaning: Where a lesser demand or obligation is refused, a greater one will certainly not be tolerated either.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Onerous things will not be countenanced where easy obligations are not" Owomoyela records a variant, entry 1062, escalating the same logic further: "In a town that does not tolerate pigeons and does not tolerate chickens, what sort of bird [will be welcome]?"
Notes: The town functions here as a scale for measuring tolerance, with different domesticated birds standing for demands of increasing weight, an argument from lesser to greater that this proverb pair states with unusual explicitness.
Source: Owomoyela 1061; variant 1062.
Literal: Olóògùn ní ń ṣe bí a-láigbọ́-ìmọ̀ràn the-medicine-man behaves like-one-impervious-to-wise-counsel; bí ogun ó bàá wọlú if war should enter-the-town, ọlọgbọ́n là ń fọ̀rọ̀ lé it-is-the-sage one turns-to-for-counsel.
Idiomatic: "The medicine man behaves like a person impervious to wise counsel; if war threatens a town, the person to consult for counsel is the sage."
Meaning: In a town's moment of genuine crisis, it is wisdom, not magical or medicinal power, that the community actually turns to.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Trust in wisdom rather than in magical charms"
Notes: This proverb explicitly ranks the sage above the medicine man in the specific civic emergency of war reaching the town, a useful data point alongside file 76's proverbs on the real but bounded power of oògùn: here the boundary is drawn at the level of collective, town-wide crisis rather than individual affliction.
Source: Owomoyela 1133.
Literal: Ọlówó á wá the-moneyed-person will-come; aláwìn á wá the-one-buying-on-credit will-come; ìlú tí à ń gbé la gbé ń gbàwìn it-is-in-the-town-one-lives that-one buys-on-credit; à-rà-àì-san ni ò súnwọ̀n buying-and-not-paying is-what-is-bad.
Idiomatic: "Those who have money will come, and those who will buy on credit will come; it is in one's town that one buys on credit; failure to pay up eventually is what is bad."
Meaning: Buying on credit within one's own town is unobjectionable in itself; the fault lies only in failing eventually to repay.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "There is nothing bad about buying on credit as long as one eventually pays"
Notes: This proverb documents credit as an ordinary feature of local economic life specific to one's own town, where personal reputation makes credit possible, distinct from transactions with strangers; the market economy this assumes is treated further in file 85.
Source: Owomoyela 1138.
Literal: Bùrẹ́kìnnín lọ̀tá ìlú the-dandy is-the-enemy of-the-town; afínjú lọba ń pa it-is-the-finicky-person the-king kills.
Idiomatic: "The dandy is the enemy of the town; it is the finicky person that the king kills."
Meaning: A town's people may envy a dandy's show, but it is the reckless, overly fastidious person who ultimately comes to grief.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "The people of a town may envy a dandy, but it is the reckless person who comes to grief," with the further explanation that the dandy knows his place even if he incites envy, whereas the finicky person who oversteps invites royal punishment [S1, note 24].
Notes: The town is the site of both envy and judgement in this proverb, the audience whose envy the dandy provokes and, implicitly, the polity whose king ultimately enforces the harsher penalty on genuine overreach.
Source: Owomoyela 1456, with note 24.
Literal: Ìtọ́sọ́ná close-investigation/careful-oversight ló ni ìlú is-what-owns/governs the-town.
Idiomatic: "Close investigation keeps the affairs of the town in order."
Meaning: Diligent scrutiny before acting is what preserves harmony and order at the level of the whole town.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Investigating matters well before acting helps maintain harmony in a group"
Notes: This proverb scales a virtue usually applied to individual conduct, care and diligence, up to the level of civic governance, treating the town's good order as the sum of exactly this kind of careful investigation rather than of any single ruler's decree.
Source: Owomoyela 1627.
The town judges, and is in turn judged. Entries 2, 3, 4, and 9 all show the town as an evaluative audience, a stranger's or a fool's conduct is measured against the town's shared standard of what befits a person's station or situation. Entries 1, 11, and 16 turn this around: the town itself, through its elders or its collective order, is shown behaving (or failing to behave) according to a standard of its own.
Collective liability and individual restraint pull against each other. Entries 8 and 10 sit in real tension: entry 8 warns that one careless individual can drag disaster into the whole town, while entry 10 warns against any individual taking the town's defence too personally upon themselves. Both proverbs assume the town as a shared, vulnerable collective, but they draw opposite conclusions about how much any single person should act on its behalf, a tension this corpus notes elsewhere as characteristic of the proverb genre rather than a contradiction to be resolved.
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