Dedication

Easy read for future posts

Some carryover answers

Here are my answers to the questions I have asked and got no answers from my colleagues here, happy new month everyone.

Sigidi- Ere -Omolangidi:

The three are names for artifacts in Yoruba. That's settled for now. No carry over.

What's the alternative word for Ilu?

Another word for Ilu is to say "Igboro". We have a clue of what this could mean with the line, "o so ahere dilu, o s'ogbe digboro"

Igbo is the other word for igbe. Both means bush in this regard. Meanwhile, Igbo in Awori means "quest", thus Igboro originally means to search and clear up for settlement.

From the above analogy, the Yoruba developed from an "intentional search" and "decisive building" of homeland on a virgin landmass.

Hence the term "Ile" (land) means land or country in Yorubaland. The Yoruba language is perpetual, we are in the present. We need a perpetual informant to access the event of the past.

Understanding Yoruba language will help in our quest to unravel or learn more about the Yoruba history. The past happened in perpetual, not in secret.

Ajagbalura

We've this word, but it's a sentence. It's a word that comes from the identity of the Ijebu folks about their past in Yoruba history.

Ajagbalura means that the Ijebu circumnavigated the dome of the earth. One who connected two ends on agba (agbanlaye), together.

This may sound far-fetched, yes. All we needed to do is to try make sense of the word "Ijebu" on it's own, and there's the truth: the word Ijebu means "seafaring".

There should be a point of origin and the anchorage in this sense of the word. The oldest should have been lost in evolutionary trend of history.

The present is to have departed possibly at the brink of collapse of the old, or her exit ultimately dealth the blow that brought her down altogether.

Another Ijebu folks should have been in history, close to the sea enough for this theory to work.

Some mystic connection

The other day, I went to see a friend who runs a fish pond. He showed me some of his stocks while we catch glimpses of the farm.

Then he said once this gets to Ijebu, he would sell them off. The Ijebu is about the size called fingerling or so. The connection is not wrong.

The Yoruba of this stock should be found somewhere near the sea for their name. It's that name that played in the subconscious of whoever coined the term.

It's the equivalent of shoals in English.

When people disappeared and appears again from the seabed, we have the Atlantis experience on the Atlantic. That's the way Athens remember.

So when we says Ijebu ode ajagbalura, we are remembering the Odyssey of the Makers of the Yoruba civilization as masters of the seas.

Ayinike Ati Ayinipada

Yoruba wordsmiths knew the limitations of the spoken word to convey vital information compared to the written documents or script, but there's no limitations on what you can do with a good language as theirs. They could do so much with it.

There are thousands of enigma in the Yoruba language, words you can stake your life on for what it means only to discover it's not what you think it means. Can anyone remove enigma from the dictionary?

In Yoruba history, you can't always tell what a word is sticking out to mean until you find out. If not, you are buying the dummy that was meant to protect the core idea. For safety sake, go in two when it's Yoruba semantics.

Plural is minimum of two, someone says.

The import of ayinike and ayinipada is this: you don't know what idea of a word is earlier or later. But since history did not happen in silo like I've said, people who were around when an event happened have their impression of it. They take mental notes.

Then there's how they will express this impression of theirs. Amongst this are the scholars, they'll coin some nice words or phrase that circulate the Yoruba with time, like a newspaper outfits of our time with killer headlines.

Then there's the everyday people. This folks don't wait for anyone to tell them what to make of a word for an idea or two from what has happened. Together, the news that breaks travelled through Yorubaland.

This "traveling news" is ayi, and the word coined to this effect is Ike. But there's how the word was when coined. That's "nike". Pardon the way I split it up disorderly.

Communication theory of old

So the idea expounded in this case is parralel to communication theory, source-destination-feedback. Effective communication generates feedback. The feedback is "the traveling news returning to it's source". It's not the same word again.

Ayinipada is how the everyday folks report the same event that scholars finds pleasant words for in their practice as courtiers or wordsmiths. It could be rough and ready but over a long time it becomes a lovely word about the same event.

So this duality is responsible for double in Yoruba history, such that one can serve as evidence for the other. All things being equal, these entries are more than double in Yoruba history. Let's restrict ourselves to double.

Having this resources at the back of the mind helps to do more with a word and it's other angles from the ancient media outfits that may have reported the same event.

Examples

We learned that Oduduwa had 7 children, but in that chronology, an entry was repeated twice: Ake and Owu. The two words is our best example. Let's exploit Owu tradition.

It's said Owu lakoda because he was crying when Oduduwa carried him, and he removed his crown and place it on the head of Owu. The lad was pacified. People saw what happened.

To some, the child is Owu, meaning wailer. To another, the child is a cry cry baby, meaning ake, and to salaye people, it's "asunkungbade", they could even call him Osun for all they care.

Historical Confirmation

This event was set at Ife, the people of the town may also like what has happened. They were the children of the man with crown, pacifying his grandson, "omo adade owo remo". That could look nice on oriki orile

This little little hints are golden connection. Our fathers are not obliged to divulge excess lest we abuse it. We should make do with just as little.

Another of such example is the ejigbara ileke adornment of Oba Ado in Ifa, it's adopted as omo eyin oloko tii s'ejigbara ileke with the Awori. This are the golden minuscules of Yoruba tradition that should be worth our perusal.

I believe we learn something new today as always.

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