OWORIN OSE

From Oya by Judith Gleason, P.138

(Actual Ifa verse, J.A. Adedeji, “The Origin of Yoruba Masque Theatre”.)

Part of the Geneology of the Igbori Clan

There was a family of hunchbacks.  The father died.  The eldest son saw the corpse and fled.  The second son shrouded it, but neglected to make other funeral arrangements.  The third son took up the corpse and attempted to sell it in the market to the makers of magical medicines.  But those traders rejected it, so the third son started home as encumbered as ever.  On the way, weariness grabbed him.  He abandoned the corpse in the bush.  Outraged at such neglect, the dead man’s spirit consulted the Ifa oracle.

Meanwhile, the king of Oyo gave the eldest son, who had inherited his father’s position as royal bard and entertainer, a wife names Iya-Maase (The-woman-is-continuously-cooking).  Years went by.  Childless, Iya-Maase consulted a diviner, named Amuisan, who foretold a son, but not until her husband had conducted appropriate funeral rites for his father.

One day Iya-Maase went to a certain stream to draw water.  There in the bush a monkey jumped out upon her.  As soon as she realized she was pregnant, Iya-Maase took refuge among her own people in a place called Oponda (Tray of creation), populated by monkeys.  Shortly after her hybrid son was born, she abandoned it on a rubbish heap in the bush and returned to her husband in town.

Meanwhile, the child on the dunghill was happened upon by a woman named Ato, who brought it home and adopted it as her own.  Ato’s husband, whose name was Ogogo, of the Igbori lineage, did not object to having his wife care for the child; but he conscientiously reported the event in town.

Now Iya-Maase confessed to her husband that the abandoned child was hers.  Should he, of the Ologbin family, acknowledge the bastard?  The oracle priest said, Yes, such was the will of Ifa, but not until the bones of his father had been brought back to his compound and funeral ceremony conducted as follows:  The cortege should begin in the bush (thereafter, called Igbale, sacred forest, precinct of Egungun).  Offerings both to the Dead and to Witches were to be brought.  The dead father’s second son was to provide the masquerade cloth.  The youngest son was to carve a wooden likeness of his father’s face.  Ato’s Husband Ogogo of Igbori, designated impersonator, was to strap the half and half child upon his back in order to create, under the cloth, an illusion of the congenital lump. The eldest son, stepfather of the apparition, was to go before, proclaiming to the townsfolk that at last he was bringing his father home.

Everything was performed in accordance with Ifa’s specifications.  When the people saw the red-gowned, hunchbacked apparition, they cried:  “See how well set are the dead man’s bones!” (Egungun gun! – thus providing a popular etymology for the cult.)  The procession halted in the private backyard of the deceased’s house.  There, in a special room constructed for the purpose, both costume and half-and-half child were hidden away from public view.  Inside the room the child’s name, Agan was pronounced for the first time.  Ato, who continued in residence to tend it, became known as Iya-Agan, even though she was only it’s foster mother. (Iya-Maase disappears from the story.) Ato’s husband took the title of Mariwo, and every time the masquerade went forth, the diviner, who had predicted and engineered all wielded the sacred switch named for him, Amuisan.