Myths of Ife · 7 of 9

V. The Úbo Wars

Arába continues: After the War of the Gods, Ífè returns to the arts of peace. Oíbo, graven on my memory

Is the sad legend which my father told me

Of the Great Gods' departure. . . The years slid by

Unnoted while King Ógun reigned. The World

Was young: upon the craggy slopes the trees

Shot forth red buds, and ancient Ífè, gaunt

With suffering, dreamed again her early dreams.

Taught by the Gods, the folk began to learn

The arts of Heaven's peace anew; the drum

Returned to measures of the dance, and Great

Orísha saw the joy of life once more

In his creatures' eyes. Thus lived mankind among The foundation of Úbo The Gods, and multiplied until the youth

Of Ífè sought new homes and wider lands

Context

The founding of Úbo as a colony of Ife and its subsequent invasion of the mother-city is the mythic-historical layer of the cycle — the part where Yoruba religious memory shades into Yoruba political memory. Ile-Ife is the spiritual capital, but the political history of Yorubaland involves successive city-states (Oyo, Ijebu, Ekiti, Ondo, the various Ekiti kingdoms) some of which trace foundational lineages to Ife and some of which had complex relations with it. Wyndham's note VII reports the Edi festival ritual in which men dressed in grass parade Ife and are pursued with fire, reenacting the burning of the Úbo invaders. He speculates the festival may also be agricultural — early dry-season bush-burning to prepare fields — and may have absorbed an older Saturnalian element. Both readings can be true; rituals tend to accumulate meanings the way rivers accumulate tributaries. What the chapter is doing in the cycle is moving the action from cosmic time into historical time: the gods have departed, and now men must defend the city themselves.Wyndham, Myths of Ife, Note VII; J. F. Ade Ajayi and Robert S. Smith, Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (1964); Robin Law, The Oyo Empire c. 1600-c. 1836 (1977).

In the vast Forest; and thus was born the first

Fair daughter of Odúwa's city. Men called

Her Úbo, and the leader took the name

Olúbo of Úbo with his chieftaincy. is attended by strife from the first. But to these colonists the Gods, their Fathers,

Gave no good gifts: 'midst battles with the Wild,

'Mid struggles with the Forest the town grew-

While dull remembrance of unnatural wrongs

Bred Man's first rebel thought against the Gods;

And when the time of festival was near,

Word came to Ífè that the folk of Úbo

Would bring no gifts, nor worship at the feet

Of Ógun. But the King scorned them, laughing: "Who lights

His lamp between the leopard's paws?" The Chief Years passed of Úbo seeks advice, In grieving while Olúbo sought the homes

Of spirits of the Forest springs, laid gifts

At crossway shrines where childless women go,

Or wandered to drear coasts to share his wrongs

With Ocean chafing at his old restraint.

But rivers answered not, not brooks, nor Gods

Of crossway altars at the light of dawn;

And through the unceasing hissing of the foam

No voice of counsel came. . . With Autumn's fall

Olúbo came with gifts before the shrine

Of the grim Forest-God who hedged his land,

And prayed him to accept the corn he brought

And the fat beasts, nor seize his lands again.

And the God saw the oil, and smelled the blood

Of birds and cattle; and the longed-for voice which the Forest-God gives him

Came to Olúbo: "See with the rain I come

Each year upon your fields with springing trees,

Rank-growing grass and vegetation wild:

Your work of yester-year is all undone

By my swift desolation. Be this your symbol:

Go thus against the Scornful Ones arrayed

As I."

In Ífè was great joy: the last

Black thundercloud has passed; the maids were wed,

And all men feasted on the sacred days Olúbo in- vades Ifè, and takes the men away as slaves. Of Ógun and the Lord of Day—when sudden,

From the still Forest o'er the walls there broke

Insight

The Forest-God's instruction to Olúbo — go against Ife dressed in grass — and the Ife people's terror at the grass-clad invaders is the kind of detail that distinguishes living tradition from literary invention. It does not read like a poet's ornament; it reads like something the festival actually preserves. Compare the Roman Lupercalia's young men in goatskins running through the streets striking women with thongs to bring fertility, the Welsh and Irish midwinter wren-boys with their straw costumes, the Slavic pust-celebrations with their straw effigies of winter, the Plains Indian Sun Dance regalia — agricultural and warfare societies preserve costume-rituals that connect human action to vegetative power, and the costumes are remembered with strange fidelity over centuries. The grass dressing connects Olúbo's people to the Forest-God whose territory had to be cleared each season; the burning of the grass-men in the Edi festival reenacts both the defeat of the Úbo invasion and the agricultural burning that turns forest into field. The myth and the work of the year are sewn into the same garment.Wyndham, Myths of Ife, Note VII; James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890), ch. on agricultural rites; Henry John Drewal, Yoruba Ritual (1992).

Portents of moving trees and hurrying grass

On Ífè's stone-still revellers. (Hope perishes

In the dark hour a mother sees the dance

Of white-robed goblins of the midnight streets—

A glimpse, no more; and her sick child is lost).

Despair held rule: the new-wed wives were lone;

Their men were slaves of Úbo lords. The drum

Was silent, and laughter mute. About dull tasks

A listless people wandered; but not so Mórimi consults Ífa,

Mórimi—for she, assured of triumph, strode

To the dim court of Ífa, and laid bare

Her gift. A vision flickered and was gone,

And the priest prophesied: "The bode is good.

As when a sick man lies beset by fiends

I call not to the Gods for aid, but take

Insight

The festival the chapter is grounded in — Edi, observed in Ile-Ife in early November — is one of the most important in the Yoruba religious calendar. Wyndham's note VII describes it: men dressed in hay parade the town and are pursued with fire; the eight-day duration includes a period of license for the women in honor of Mórimi's role; the Òọni remains in his palace except on the first day. The festival is doing simultaneous theological and agricultural work: it remembers Mórimi's salvation of Ife, and it reenacts the dry-season burning of the bush. Festivals that fuse religious memory with seasonal agricultural work are common — the Hebrew Sukkot folds the harvest into the wilderness wandering memory, the Christian Easter is set against spring, the Hindu Holi marks the burning of winter and a particular myth of Prahlada's deliverance. What is striking about Edi is that it has continued without interruption for centuries: a sacred memory danced into the ground year after year, the Òrìṣà's presence reaffirmed through the same fire that prepares the year's farms.Wyndham, Myths of Ife, Note VII; Margaret Thompson Drewal, Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency (Indiana UP, 1992); Jacob K. Olupona, City of 201 Gods (UC Press, 2011).

The pepper on my tongue and thus invoke

Those very fiends in their dread mother's name,

And then command the Prince of leaguing Woes

(Though hastening to the River's lip) to turn

Again—such now is Ífa's counsel, borne

Swift in the form of Messengers to me who advises her to go to Úbo. His priest, his voice: 'Evil has come down on Ífè:

By Evil only can desire prevail.

Take six he-goats to Éshu, the Undoer;

Thus crave his aid and go, Great Mórimi,

A harlot to the land of Úbo'" . . So sped

Mórimi to the rebel town; and when She finds out the secret. A lord of Úbo sought her midst the shades

Of night, the Undoer's will possessed his lips,

And he betrayed the way of Úbo's downfall.

While Éshu's shrine yet ran with blood, the Gods, Meanwhile, the gods transform to stones, rivers, etc.,

Unknowing, sat alone in their abasement,

And Ógun said: "We scorned our upstart son;

Scorned him and let him be—nor bore in mind

The wisdom of the Past, 'A little snake

Is yet a snake.'1 See now the end has come:

Swift from the sight of mocking men we must

Depart. The sage Osányi will lay wide

The door of our deliverance: come then—

For naked of dominion what are we Gods?"

And one by one Osányi gave his charms

To the lorn Gods. . Orísha could but moan

"Children I made you—who but I?" and sank

Beneath the soil he loved. And Óshun threw

Her body down—but never ceased: a stream

Gushed up, the sacred stream that flows for ever.

Olókun fell; 'neath the wide Earth she flowed

To the broad spaces of her troubled realm. . . except Ógun. So went the Gods; but last, as Osányi gave

The charm to Ógun, last of all the Gods—

Back from the rebel town Great Mórimi

Rushed back, and cried: "The fire the vulture brought

Shall slay the hosts of Úbo!". . . The months crept by

Fate-laden, white King Ógun's warrior son, Orányan destroys the Úbo army. Orányan,1 schooled the sireless lads to War;

But when the festive season came, he hid

Them with red fire prepared within the city,

And, as the invading hosts of Úbo scaled

The walls, a rush of flaming boughs destroyed

Grass garments and rebellious men. Thus fell

Úbo before Orányan, and her folk

Saw slavery in Ífè. . .

Time spared these deeds—

But gave to the impenetrable wilds

The place where Úbo stood, her rebel Gods, The Édi Festival Her rites. And here in Ífè, by command

Of Mórimi, the children of the captives

Worship Olúbo, but must flee before

Orányan's fire. And on those days of feasting

No man may blame his wife for her misdeeds—

All-mindful of the guile of Mórimi.