Òwe on Prayer, Blessing and Curse

Àdúrà is prayer, bùkún is blessing, and èpè is curse. Of these three, èpè is by a wide margin the best represented in Owomoyela's collection: seven of this file's nine proverbs concern curse, one concerns blessing by implication, and only one uses the verb for prayer directly. This imbalance is reported rather than corrected; it may reflect the genre's general preference for warning and admonition over benediction, or it may simply be an artifact of what a targeted search of one collection surfaces. Confidence on this file is marked medium accordingly: the èpè material is solid, but the file cannot claim to represent prayer and blessing proverbs proportionately, and a fuller search of Delano or Ajibola might change that balance.

The proverbs

1. Àbùkún layé gbà.

Literal: Àbùkún addition/supplement layé gbà is-what-the-world accepts.

Idiomatic: "The world accepts only adding on." 1

Meaning: The world welcomes increase and supplement, not depletion.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Supplement rather than deplete" 1

Notes: Àbùkún is built on the same root as bùkún, to bless or increase, and though Owomoyela's gloss reads it in a general economic register (add to what exists rather than take from it), the word's root sense keeps blessing, understood as increase, close to the surface of this proverb.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 684.

2. Bí a bá ṣe ohun ńlá, à fi èpè gba ara ẹni là.

Literal: Bí a bá ṣe ohun ńlá if one has-done a-great thing (offense), à fi èpè gba ara ẹni là one uses a-curse-oath to-free oneself.

Idiomatic: "If one has committed a great offense, one frees oneself by swearing [innocence]." 1

Meaning: A self-imprecating oath, swearing innocence on pain of a curse falling on oneself if false, is the recourse when accused of a serious wrong.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "One's greatest duty is self-preservation" 1

Notes: This proverb documents the specific legal-religious mechanism of the self-curse or oath-swearing, in which èpè functions as the enforcement clause of a sworn statement rather than as an attack on another person; it connects to the oath-swearing practice noted in file 74 (Owomoyela 1407, on swearing by Earth) as a related but distinct use of the same underlying logic.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 834.

3. Èpè la fi ń wo èpè sàn.

Literal: Èpè a-curse la fi ń wo èpè sàn is-what-one-uses to-treat a-curse into-recovery.

Idiomatic: "Curses are the antidote for curses." 1

Meaning: A curse is countered by a curse, not by some categorically different remedy.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "One matches the remedy to the affliction" 1

Notes: This proverb places èpè inside the same "like cures like" logic Owomoyela records for medicine generally (file 76, entry 15, "a terrible epidemic is confronted with a terrible medicine"), treating curse as a force with its own internal countermeasure rather than something only sacrifice or prayer can neutralise.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 906.

4. "Kí ìtìjú pa mí": ààrẹ èpè ni.

Literal: "Kí ìtìjú pa mí" "may shame kill me": ààrẹ èpè ni is-the-chief of-curses.

Idiomatic: "'May I die of shame': that is the chief of all curses." 1

Meaning: Among all possible curses, wishing shame upon oneself or another is the most severe.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "No fate is worse than disgrace" 1

Notes: This proverb ranks curses against one another and puts a self-directed formula, invoking shame rather than physical harm, at the top of the hierarchy, which is consistent with the weight this corpus documents elsewhere (owe-iwa-character, entries on ojú tì, shame) being placed on reputation over bodily welfare.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 2755.

5. "Ata-à mi dandan, iyọ̀-ọ̀ mi dandan," olórí èpè.

Literal: "Ata-à mi dandan, iyọ̀-ọ̀ mi dandan" "my-pepper certainly, my-salt certainly," olórí èpè the-head of-curses.

Idiomatic: "'My pepper indeed, my salt indeed': the most formidable of curses." 1

Meaning: Invoking what one has personally provided for another, in the form of an accusatory reminder, ranks as the most powerful kind of curse.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Never do evil to your benefactor" 1

Notes: The curse formula here is built from the plainest possible domestic provisions, pepper and salt, staples any household head would supply, and its force comes from that very ordinariness: invoking a benefactor's mundane generosity against an ungrateful beneficiary is treated as more devastating than any exotic imprecation.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 3470.

6. Ẹ ń gbàdúrà kí ẹṣin ilé kú; ẹ ò níí lẹ́ṣin mìíràn níran yín mọ́.

Literal: Ẹ ń gbàdúrà you (plural) are-praying kí ẹṣin ilé kú that-the-household-horse die; ẹ ò níí lẹ́ṣin mìíràn níran yín mọ́ you will-not have another-horse in-your-lineage again.

Idiomatic: "You pray for the death of the household horse; there will never be another horse in your lineage." 1

Meaning: Wishing ill on one's own household's most illustrious member is a self-destructive prayer, since it forecloses ever having another like them.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Any household that wishes for the destruction of its most illustrious member will never again be blessed with a worthy member" 1

Notes: This is the file's clearest example of gbàdúrà, to pray, used with a hostile object, praying for a death rather than for a blessing, which shows that the verb of prayer is not restricted in Yorùbá to petition for good; the proverb condemns this specific use as self-defeating rather than treating prayer's content as neutral.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 3070.

7. Wọ́n ní, "Adẹ́tẹ̀, o ò gbẹnu àkàrà." Ó ní wọn ò gbàdúrà pé kí ọwọ́-ọ òun bá òun délé ná.

Literal: Wọ́n ní they said, "Adẹ́tẹ̀, o ò gbẹnu àkàrà" "leper, won't you stop for bean fritters"; ó ní wọn ò gbàdúrà he said they-should-not pray pé kí ọwọ́-ọ òun bá òun délé ná that what-is-in-his-hand go-home-with-him-safely-instead.

Idiomatic: "They said, 'Leper, won't you stop and receive your extra fried bean fritters?' He responded by asking if they should not rather pray that what he already has in his hands will go home safely with him." 1

Meaning: The leper redirects an offer of more toward a request for a more modest, more reliable blessing, securing what he already holds rather than risking it for an addition.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Covetousness can turn out to be a drain on one's resources" 1

Notes: This is the file's second direct use of gbàdúrà, and it is the clearest example of prayer used in its ordinary benedictory sense, a wish for safe passage of what one already possesses, spoken by a person whose social position (leprosy carried heavy stigma in the world these proverbs come from) makes the modesty of the request pointed rather than merely humble.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 3974.

8. Ogun ní ń ṣi ẹni mú; èpè kì í ṣi ẹni jà.

Literal: Ogun ní ń ṣi ẹni mú war is-what mistakenly-seizes one; èpè kì í ṣi ẹni jà a-curse never mistakenly-attacks one.

Idiomatic: "A war might capture a person by mistake; a curse never affects one by mistake." 1

Meaning: Where war can claim uninvolved bystanders, a curse strikes with precision; if it lands on you, it was meant for you.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "More often than not one's misfortunes are the clear results of curses, not simply happenstance" 1

Notes: This proverb asserts that curse is a targeted, non-accidental mechanism, which is a substantive claim about how èpè is believed to operate, distinct from and more deterministic than the general fate proverbs of file 79; it treats being cursed as evidence of having deserved it in some way, an inference with the same structure as the witchcraft-accusation logic documented in file 76.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 4576.

9. Àwòdì jẹun èpè, sanra.

Literal: Àwòdì the-hawk jẹun èpè eats accursed-food, sanra grows-fat.

Idiomatic: "The hawk feeds fat on accursed food." 1

Meaning: Some agents thrive on what is dangerous or forbidden to others, unharmed by a curse that would harm anyone else.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "One cannot worry too much about offending people" 1

Notes: This proverb parallels the vulture-and-sacrifice proverb of file 74 (entry 3, "eating without adverse effects is the vulture's way of consuming sacrificial offerings"): a scavenging bird again appears as the exception to a rule that would harm an ordinary consumer, here applied to accursed rather than merely sacrificial food.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 4805. Also attested at 2.

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Reading this set

Curse dominates the recorded vocabulary in this file, and blessing and prayer are comparatively thin. Only entries 6 and 7 use gbàdúrà directly, and entry 1 touches blessing only through etymology rather than through a proverb that names blessing as its subject. This imbalance should not be read as evidence that Yorùbá religious speech lacks a developed vocabulary of blessing; it is more likely an artifact of Owomoyela's thematic arrangement and of a proverb genre that, across this whole corpus section, skews toward warning, correction, and consequence rather than benediction. A fuller search across Delano, Ajibola, and the ìjúbà and greeting-formula literature, which lies mostly outside proverb collections proper, would be needed to represent blessing proportionately, and this file does not claim to have done that.

Curse is treated as targeted and real, not superstitious noise. Entry 8 states plainly that curse, unlike war, does not strike by accident, and entry 2 shows curse functioning as the enforcement mechanism of a sworn oath. These are documented beliefs about how èpè is held to operate, presented as such.