Oríkì Òrìṣà: Ògún

My Ogun is in seven paths: Ogun of Alara receives dogs, Ogun of Ire receives rams, Ogun of Ikola receives snails, Ogun of Gbengbena drinks the sap of trees.

Translated by Adeboye Babalola 1.

Ogun, possessed of worldwide renown, chief of deities, possessor of countless houses in the heavens, one who has water at home yet bathes with blood, one who has garments at home yet wraps himself in palm fronds.

Translated by Adeboye Babalola 2.

What the two versions show. Both are catalogued as coming from the same source book. Version one lists Ògún's regional cult centres (Alára, Ìrè, Ìkọ́là) and their distinct sacrificial animals, dog, ram, snail, a genuinely encyclopaedic function: this text is a memory aid for which offering belongs at which shrine. Version two makes no geographic claim at all and instead builds its effect entirely on paradox, water at home but blood for washing, garments at home but palm fronds worn instead, the ascetic-warrior imagery 23-orisa-deep/02-ògún.md also documents from a different transcription. This corpus does not merge them, since nothing indicates whether they are two performances of the same formula or genuinely distinct passages Babalola recorded separately.

Significance. The seven-manifestations count itself is doctrinally significant: Ògún is understood across Yorubaland as present in multiple town-specific forms, each with a distinct name, cult centre, and preferred offering, and this text is the standard mnemonic form that doctrine takes in oral performance.

Performed. Ògún annual festivals, occupational gatherings of blacksmiths and hunters, and propitiatory rituals; by ìjálá chanters and Ògún devotees 12.

Variants. A further variant line is recorded alongside version one: Ògún Onírè ló l'ẹ́jẹ̀; Mọ́lamọ́la ló ni èkuru ("Ògún of Ìrè owns blood; Mọ́lamọ́la owns bean-fritters"), not independently glossed here 1.

Ogun, the possessor of two matchets; with one he prepares the farm, and with the other he clears the road. The day Ogun was coming down from the hilltop. He was clothed in fire and bloodstained garment. Ogun, owner of the house of money, owner of the road of wealth.

Translated by S. A. Babalola 3.

What it says. Ògún's two functions, agricultural clearing and road-opening, are literalised as two separate tools in his two hands, and the fire-and-blood imagery of the previous texts recurs here in a fuller narrative frame: a specific day, a specific descent from a hilltop.

Significance. This version is the fullest documented linkage in this harvest between Ògún's economic patronage (farming, the road, and by extension trade and now, in the tradition's living extension, driving) and his violent aspect, presented as two faces of the same figure rather than as separate deities. 13-oral-literature/02-ijala.md treats the general association of Ògún with hunters and iron-workers; this text is the ìjálá-genre praise that association produces.

Performed. Hunters' gatherings, annual Ògún festivals, sacrificial rituals, and communal assemblies, chanted by ìjálá chanters and guild hunters 3.

Ogun, god of iron, my husband. He has clothes but wears palm fronds. He uses robes of fire as his cover, a shirt of blood is what he puts on.

Translated by Aaron Carter-Ényì, from a performance by Máyọ̀wá Adéyẹmọ at the University of Lagos's World Voice Day, 2013, already presented in full context in oriki-in-contemporary-life 4. Included again here, briefly, because a reader assembling the full Ògún corpus should see it beside the classical texts it echoes: the fire-and-blood, garments-versus-palm-fronds imagery of the Babalola texts above recurs almost unchanged in this contemporary performance, which is itself evidence of how stable the core praise formula for Ògún has remained across roughly half a century of transcription.

What is distinct here. The possessive "husband of mine" personalises the address in first person in a way the more encyclopaedic Babalola texts above do not; a devotee or a performer speaking as a devotee claims a direct, marital-register relationship to the god, a mode of address oriki-poetics-and-untranslatability and oriki-orisa-osun-yemoja-and-oya (for Ọya's relationship to Ṣàngó) both note as a recurring feature of Yoruba òrìṣà praise: gods are addressed as kin and spouses, not only as distant powers.