Discourse and its disclosures: Yoruba women and the sanctity of abuse

Andrew Apter

A close study of what the British met in Ekitiland did not totally capture realities of the traditional political system in the organization and political governance of the various communities. Hence, this study briefly examines the settlements pattern across Ekitiland from 1300 to 1950 A.D with a view to establish the differences amongst the people of various communities who had fused together or were integrated into same community through alliances and conquests in pre-colonial era but now agitating for separation and local autonomies in modern times. In tracing the cause of modern day conflicts and agitations for local autonomies in some communities in Ekitiland, it is obvious that the claim of most communities seeking autonomy is linked to their sources and settlement formation. Inquiry into age-long patterns of town's formation in Ekitiland and the nexus of their relationship shows that the actively conscious sources of the origin of existing human settlements and their interactional patterns, inter-communal relations and direction of communal growth were most likely reasons for recent years' agitation for separation. Hence, the extensive inquiries made to validate the substance of various records presented when cases of conflict and agitations or instances of demand for Local Government or chieftaincy recognition were addressed. The demands of the Ejiyan-Ekiti community and its breakaway from Ipoti-Ekiti through official recognition of its Chief and similar break up of Orun from Igbemo-Ekiti spells a recurrence of demands and agitations for local autonomy in Ekiti State. Reference to the demand of 6 Effon Alaaye Chieftains seeking autonomy and severance of relationship from the Alaayemore of Efon Alaaye, to gain official recognition as Chiefs despite their age-long relationship also indicates the differences and expectations of local people in their various Ekiti communities.

In 1981, there was a publication in CONCORD Newspaper on the interview granted by HRM Oba Sikiru Adetona, the Awujale of Ijebu Ode on tracing of the origin of the people of Ijebu to Sudan. This resulted to controversy among scholars and current day enthusiasts who questioned the origins of Ijebu to establish the facts in light of extensive writings of Samuel Johnson, Banji Akintoye, Akinjogbin, Ade-Ajayi, Falola and other historians on Yoruba history. It is therefore necessary to interject and contribute to the question surrounding Ijebu history as an academic exercise. In making any contribution, I wish to underscore the relevance of historiography and philosophy of history to establish and streamline the facts and fictions that assail our understanding of the study of history. This is important in addressing the challenges of reconstruction when new ideas are learnt that seems strange and different from known values schooled in the knowledge of Yoruba traditions. I need to state here that we should not be alarmed but to take it with pinch of salt and allow the dead to bury their dead. What’s important is that scholars of history will hold sacred the facts of history told despite its perspectives, the focus and objectives of research and the findings of a writer. All readers of our local history ought to know that changes have occurred in the collation of our traditions before the advent of western literacy. What helped the African traditional society to preserve their history was the reliability of its local historians and court recorders drawing from their extensive knowledge of oral traditions, narratives, myths and legends, Ifa corpus and other customs that helps in deriving the facts of history in relation to what historians later found very useful when corroborating facts from their neighbours and other empirical sources. Many have tried in the past and some will continue to attempt to change the tradition or storyline of history to suit their intent and purposes failing to realize that the formation of kingdoms and the tradition of various societies were established around well known ancient practices that are age long and not easily distorted. That is why most of the attempts to reconstruct history outside well known traditions will fail. No one can easily distort history and get away with it. The storyline will expose the frauds apart from the lack of well known traditions to support and establish the facts of history. Needless are anthropological and archeological evidences on the sociology of the people and intelligence report in the archives that cannot be faulted. The interesting storyline that most of those who intend to rewrite history often focus on is to achieve: a. The recognition of their separate identity or a sense of different sources of origin. b. The possibility of using this idea of a different identity to rent the robe of equality of race or ethnic nationalism c. The need to use their newfound claims (without age long proof) to either perpetuate a supremacy theory or superiority with a major founder who is regarded as the traditional source of authority within their territorial space d. The possibility of using their reinvented storyline to concentrate on the idea of underscoring existing traditions where they were not treated well or where they felt that the process of formulating the history has not given them the prominence or status they desire or deserve e. The possibility of agitating for a separate traditional and political independence, internal autonomy or relevance within the ethnic relationship and identity. The rendition of most of the storyline therefore tends to perpetuate a new idea of history among Yoruba people that is not only creating unnecessary controversy and unguarded statements, it often underscore the validity of the new claims as may be shown in the course of this exercise. This is because the storyline often does not remove the fact that the most possible intent of the writers is an attempt to justify the basis of why we cannot totally do away the facts of history and well known traditions that predates their claims. There is no self help in history because history is not the end justifies the means. Rather, history helps to represent issues in the facts of life and records of events interpreted over time and space by tracing the events of the past and the development of the society and its people. This is why the Yoruba would say: Enitan kii J’awa de (No one can tell it all). Literally it is impossible for a person to let the story of his birth. It is people around him who witnessed it that would say it better. History therefore become more pronounced and honourable as a legacy when the accounts are corroborated in traditions of neighbours far and near and not in what you believe or conceive as your storyline. It takes two to tango.

Amidu Sanni, Lagos State University amsanni@yahoo.co.uk Paper presented at the African Studies Center, College of Arts and Sciences, Boston University USA, Monday November 20, 2017 Abstract The Yoruba (southwest Nigeria) came in contact with Islam in the 16th C, and their earliest documented history which was traceable to the 17thC was said to have been made in Yoruba language using the Arabic characters (Ade Ajayi 2006). The modified form of the Arabic script for all languages whose speakers have come in contact with Islam is generally known as Ajami, and the tradition is widely cultivated for many African languages, including, Hausa, Mandinka, Fulfulde, Yoruba, Kanuri, and Wolof, among others (Cf. Ngom 2006; Mumin and Versteegh 2014). But the oldest documentary Yoruba Ajami goes back only to the late 19th C, and the absence of a standard Ajami orthography, especially for consonants and vowels for which there are no equivalents in Arabic has for long made reading, writing, and comprehension of Yoruba Ajami materials almost impossible, except with some special skills. In the last three decades, however, the discovery of new texts in Yoruba Ajami and the increased use of it- even among those who are literate in Western and formal Arabic- in religious writing, short story, advertisement, political pamphleteering, proselytism, personal records, among others, has brought the Ajami tradition into a new focus. My presentation will examine the pre-colonial and post-colonial African processes of knowledge production and transmission with particular attention to the knowledge and epistemologies that are buried in the Yoruba Ajami as a new medium for an authentic African voice in socio-cultural expression and scholarship.

International African Institute Discourse and Its Disclosures: Yoruba Women and the Sanctity of Abuse Author(s): Andrew Apter Source: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 68, No. 1 (1998), pp. 68-97 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1161148 . Accessed: 16/03/2011 14:54 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. 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Cambridge University Press and International African Institute are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. http://www.jstor.org Africa 68 (1), 1998 DISCOURSE AND ITS DISCLOSURES: YORUBA WOMEN AND THE SANCI'I'I'YOF ABUSE Andrew Apter It is not uncommonfor those who live amongstprimitivepeoplesto come across 'obscenity'in speechandaction.This 'obscenity'is often not an expressionby an individualutteredunder great stress and condemnedas bad taste, but is an expressionby a groupof personsandis permittedandeven prescribedby society. 1965: 76] [Evans-Pritchard, Thus opens an early essay by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, excerpted from his Ph.D. thesis and first published in 1929, on 'Collective Expressions of Obscenity in Africa'. Although lacking the polish of his more mature writings, the essay represents the first systematic approach to ritually sanctioned licence and 'licentiousness' in Africa, bringing together scattered texts in published accounts with his own Azande material. Several important ideas were foreshadowed in this essay, anticipating Radcliffe-Brown's theory of 'permitted disrespect', Gluckman's work on rituals of rebellion, and even Turner's studies of ritual liminality.1 For central to EvansPritchard'sargumentwas the insight that sanctioned obscenities made social sense by channelling repressed desire and 'pent-up emotion' (ibid.: 95) into harmless 'palliatives' (ibid.: 100) and collective activities that were generally (but not exclusively) sanctified by ceremonial. I am not suggesting that Evans-Pritchard was ever a psychological reductionist, despite his flirtation with Freud in the essay.2 As his 1937 study of Zande witchcraft would later reveal, he might incline toward a social theory of the psychological, but never toward a psychological theory of the social. Nonetheless, the problem of repression remained central to his earlier essay, a problem which has returned, in various guises, to haunt anthropological studies of ritualised licence despite principled stands against psychological explanations (Reay, 1959; Norbeck, 1963; Van den Berghe, 1963; Harris, 1978; Heald, 1982, 1989). Today Evans-Pritchard'sessay is history, and its relevance remains more a matter of intellectual genealogy than of contemporary research. It is now becoming de rigeur to locate verbal art and performance within sociopolitical relations of textual production, exploring the poetic and strategic values, dynamic ambiguities, and complex historicities of what Barber and de Moraes Farias (1989) call 'discourse and its disguises'. The effect has been to destabilise conventional distinctions between oral texts and social contexts precisely because oral literatures produce such instabilities-by remapping social categories, refashioning social identities, and by invoking rival histories and memories to shape and reorient social action.3 But if discourse masks and disguises, by cloaking protest and criticism in poetry and praise, it also reveals and discloses, giving active voice to hidden passions and secrets that are otherwise repressed. It is this latter aspect of ritual discourse-one first theorised by Evans-Pritchard-which this article will explore, in songs performed during the Oroyeye festival of Ayede Ekiti THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 69 in north-eastern Yorubaland. Following recent developments in the interpretation of African oral texts (Barber, 1991a; Barber and de Moraes Farias, 1989; Irvine, 1993, 1996), I will locate these songs within a variety of shifting contexts, ranging from the specific social project of the festival itself-which is to ostracise thieves and stigmatise 'evildoers'-to the sexual, socio-political and historical 'sub-texts' which, when voiced, account for its deeper meanings and ritual power. In so doing, I hope to go beyond canonical accounts of how ritualised ostracism upholds general norms of sociability (although such norms are clearly invoked), for, as we shall see, the 'canalising' functions of sanctioned obscenity and abuse are far from harmless palliatives for those under attack. Nor do they merely redress antisocial behaviour, for the 'grandmothers' (yeye) of the Oroyeye festival recover repressed historical memories and dynastic claims that, in times of crisis, can trigger social and political change. True by definition, Oroyeye texts not only constitute an effective form of political criticism-in one famous case rallying the public to depose an errant Qba (king)-but also establish a public archive of evidence for local magistrates and historians in adducing testimony, citing precedents, and recalling critical moments in Ayede's turbulent past. OROYEYEIN THE KINGDOMOF AYEDE The cult of Oroyeye is not typical of the Yoruba ritual associations conventionally referred to as briai cults, in that its ritual functions are much more specialised. Whereas cults of the brisa-such as Shango, Ogun, Yemoja, Oshun, and Obatala, to name the most widely known-have complex priesthoods with various grades of titleholders, ritual specialists and devotees housed in town shrines (ipara), the Oroyeye cult is relatively simple, consisting of a core of eight untitled women from Imela lineage in Ayede's Owaiye quarter.And unlike Ayede's dominant briSa cults (Yemoja, Orisha Ojuna, Orisha Iyagba, Olua, and Oloke), which, as I have described elsewhere (Apter, 1992), invoke the power of their deities to remake and revise the body politic during elaborate annual festivals, the powers of Oroyeye priestesses are explicitly punitive. Their task as social critics is to expose, abuse, and in the most serious cases curse malefactors, mobilising the force of public censure and condemnation to bear upon their misdeeds and reputations. The consequences of such criticisms vary, ranging from the immediate payment of a small fine to save face in response to mild teasing4 to full-fledged ostracism, exile, and death resulting from the most serious abuses (eebu) and curses (epe). As one Ayede man explained, 'If you provoke the worshippers of Oroyeye, they will mourn for you as if you are dead. If you are not careful you will die.' He went on to illustrate the cult's sweeping powers and indifference to status and office: 'Nobody is too high or too low for the "sting" of Oroyeye. Not even Kabiyesi [lit. 'His Highness', i.e. the king]. People have gone into exile after Oroyeye. In the past, if you mistreated your slaves, you got into trouble.' Although, as far as I can tell, the Oroyeye cult is regionally limited to certain north-easternYoruba towns, such as lye and Itapaji, within Ayede's wider political kingdom, similar ritual functions have been recorded in the 70 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE Orepepee segment of the Oramfe festival in Ondo (Olupona, 1991: 96-105) and in the Gelede festivals of Egbado, Awori and other subcultural areas in south-western Yorubaland (Drewal and Drewal, 1983: xix-xx et passim; Thompson, 1976: 14/1-7; Harper, 1970, for the north-western town of Ijio, near Sabe) during the nocturnal ceremony of Oro Efe.5 Describing an Efe ritual in the town of Ajilete, Thompson (1976: 14/4-5) relates how 'the priestess leads the singers to the night market where they perform criticisms of local society', adding that 'the word, Efe, means "just joking" to emphasise the license by which the singers allude to misdemeanors and other indiscretions . . .'. Drewal and Drewal (1983: 38-61) provide extended documentation and analysis of Efe songs, which invoke the power of witches in the euphemism of 'the mothers' (iyd wa) to lampoon, chastise, and curse targeted enemies of the people.6 Resembling Oroyeye songs in both substance and spirit, with similarly complex intertextualities and discursive functions,7 Efe songs belong to an elaborate masquerade association totally absent among Ekiti Yoruba. But, despite their different ritual media and iconographies, both cults seem to share an underlying cultural logic.8 For, like Oro Efe and its Gelede dancers, Oroyeye appeals to the power (ase) of women and witches to placate 'negative' witchcraft and disclose malevolent agency. In this respect, the term yeye conveys a range of related meanings. Its primary denotation of 'grandmother' (in Ekiti dialect) represents the senior status of female elders who are honoured and feared for their secret knowledge and hidden, self-contained powers.9 'Oroyeye', I was told, thus means 'festival [orb] of the grandmothers[yeye]', referring quite literally to the elderly women of the festival itself. But there is more to the grandmothers than meets the eye. Their very bodies are repositories of aSe-the concentrated power of life blood and verbal command which motivates all ritual activity. Describing the 'mothers' of Gelede ritual, the Drewals (1983: 75) explain, 'Elderly women, those past menopause, are most likely to possess this power, not only because of their cool, covert, secretive characters but also because they retain blood that possesses aie, vital force. A praise name for the aged mothers is "the one with the vagina that turns upside down without pouring blood"'. As we shall see, it is precisely this power of elderly women, congealed in the blood of their wombs and unleashed by their speech, which sanctions the discourse of Oroyeye and invests it with such concentrated afe. But if yeye refers to the performers of this discourse, it also extends to the figure of their deity, as Iyeye, the spiritual grandmotherof the cult, who is described by some as an oriSa. Iyeye is thus grandmotherhood deified, a righteous and vindictive guardian spirit who harnesses the powers of unbridled witchcraft to punish offenders and protect the community. In this sense Oroyeye signifies 'festival of iyeye', in honour of the deity herself. This semantico-pragmatic slippage between devotees and deity is of course ritually coherent, since-during the festival-the 1priestesses become possessed by Iyeye, serving as vehicles of her voice. The deictic dimensions of ritual speech-more specifically, the grammatical shifting of speaking subjects between devotees, deities, and various social actors and categories-are a critical component of the language of ai$e THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE FIG. 1 71 The kingdomof Ayede. which I have explicated elsewhere in some detail (Apter, 1992: 117-48). As we shall see, the 'I', 'you' and 'we' of Oroyeye texts are in constant motion, not only remapping the 'participation structure' (Irvine, 1996: 132-6) of speech events, but also sustaining multiple possibilities of discursive implication within a given utterance.1' For now, I will emphasise the most basic consequence of the shifting grammatical subject for the priestesses themselves, which is to provide them with immunity and place their judgements beyond appeal. The priestesses, I was told, can never be challenged. They are incapable of error, not only because they know the details of each case, but because their discourse belongs to their omniscient deity (Iyeye), who communicates through them. To illustrate the binding authority of the cult's pronouncements, I was told of an incident in 1975 when a woman in Ayede was abused by Oroyeye for using witchcraft against her husband, his second wife and their son (Fig. 2). Challenging the allegation by the son, the woman called the police, and the case was brought before the Ata (Ayede's king). The police were abused by the 'grandmothers' and the Ata told the police to go. 72 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE (1) \ O (2) A =0 \ FIG.2 Lineage segmentation and fission. The unilateral power and immunity of the Oroyeye cult, which during the festival extend over the king, are all the more significant in the context of Ayede's dynastic history. Like many Ekiti kingdoms of north-east Yorubaland, Ayede developed from a refugee settlement of relatively decentralised villages and village clusters-what Obayemi (1971: 205-9) calls 'ministates'-that were sacked by Nupe, Ilorin and Ibadan invaders during the nineteenth-century wars and reorganised under strong men who were then recognised as kings. Founded circa 1845 by the Ekiti warlord Eshubiyi (Johnson 1921: 308, 403), who led a core of refugees from the town of lye to resettle between the older kingdoms of Ishan and Itaji, Ayede was augmented by an influx of immigrantswho together regroupedinto the four 'original' lye quarters of Owaiye, Isaoye, Ejigbo and Ilaaro and two additional 'stranger' quartersof Odoalu and Egbe Oba. Although there is much disagreement over particulars, since dynastic history always involves a contest of political claims, local historians generally agree that the former Ol6 of lye lost his crown to Eshubiyi, who tricked the lye people into subjection by proclaiming himself the Ata of Ayede, thereby founding a new ruling dynasty. Eshubiyi's suppression of the lye chiefs and his usurpationof the kingship not only bears directly upon the history of the Oroyeye cult, which was broughtto Ayede from lye but, more important,underlies the active role performed by the cult in opposing Eshubiyi's rise to power, and in alluding to the repression and potential restorationof lye kingship in its songs. The Oroyeye cult would hardly have a neutral voice in dynastic affairs, since it was (and remains) vested in the very lineage-that of Imela in Owaiye quarter-which owned the title of Oli in lye. In other words, Imela was the former royal lineage of lye, and its Oroyeye cult took an active role in protecting the kingship from outside claims. The late Michael B. Ayeni, who served as the magistrate of Ayede's first customary court under the British and became a recognised authorityon lye history, told of a struggle before the rise of Eshubiyi, when three factions sought to rotate the kingship between three additional lineages: Abudo of Owaiye quarter, Ilaa of Isaoye quarter, and Ilesi of Ejigbo quarter.During its festival, Oroyeye came out, singing: Onimela, Eyin mQn la se Oli lye. You people of Imela, You [alone]make the Olu of lye. THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 73 Although Michael Ayeni quoted the song to illustrate an historical struggle over dynastic succession, the text also illuminates the cult's very engagement within that struggle, voicing its opposition to rival political claims. Given Oroyeye's proprietary interest in the crown, it is hardly surprising that the cult expressed alarm over the rise of the warlord Eshubiyi, anticipating his eventual usurpationof the kingship in the following warning song: Onimogun,aldkoto, O riseri bailye. Onimogun,ownerof the calabashcrown, He is threateningthe people of lye. The text plays on the ambiguity of alhkoto, which doubles as 'owner of a deep calabash' or 'calabash crown', and as a type of military helmet worn in battle.l3 'The calabash crown' refers to the ritual calabash of the Orisha Ojuna cult in Ayede,14 which Onimogun brought to lye and bestowed upon his son, Eshubiyi, who used it to as a warrior to consolidate ritual control and build up his power base in lye, and later in Ayede, where it became a major town cult. Thus the primary meanings of aldkoto as 'calabash crown' and 'helmet' signify the dangerous potential of Orisha Ojuna as an external source and sign of Eshubiyi's growing military power. A related Oroyeye song dating from this period warns against the political dangers of the 'calabash crown' to mobilise opposition against Eshubiyi's emerging political agenda: Olh lye kl i de akoto. Oli of lye neverwears a calabashcrown. The song responded to Eshubiyi's effort to bring lye within the ritual field of Orisha Ojuna by demanding that the Olu should pay tribute and express obeisance to its festival, owned by the baidl of Otunja in Ikole.' By rejecting the 'calabash crown' the Olu of lye would reaffirm his politicoritual autonomy. Hence an expanded form of this text (which was provided in English): Baidl Otunjais sendingto informyou that the festival of Otemuriu [the sacred waterof OrishaOjunain Ikole] is near. The Olu of Iye neverwearsa calabashcrown. Are you not preparingfor a fight?'6 The struggle which followed is alive and well in the historical memory of the lye 'core' of Ayede's citizens, lurking beneath the surface of many contemporarychieftaincy disputes. The lye settlers eventually lost their fight against Eshubiyi, who developed a military autocracy in Ayede and initiated the 'Eshubiyi' ruling line. But if the Oroyeye cult failed, in the last instance, to thwart the ambitions of the infamous warrior king, it was not for lack of trying. Nor was the struggle completely in vain. Following a common Yoruba pattern,what it forfeited in political authoritywas retainedwithin the ritual domain, in the cult of Oroyeye itself. Although the Imela lineage lost 74 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE control over the kingship, its cult remained, as a sort of religious compensation for political dispossession, invoking the memory of the Olu dynasty in its annual crusade against internal enemies. As we shall see in more recent texts, repressed claims of former kingship are repeatedly insinuated in Oroyeye songs, motivating their metaphors and animating their rituals as a continuous historical 'sub-text'. As the cult's historic struggle against Eshubiyi reveals, Oroyeye's political warnings and directives are not always heeded, and it would be incorrect to assume that the binding authority asserted in principle is always achieved in practice. The cult's pronouncements are always articulated within a competitive political field, and if those abused are sufficiently powerful they can prevail against the voice of the grandmothers, although failed accusations remain as a rhetorical resource which can be resurrected as evidence in subsequent conflicts. In this respect, Oroyeye texts constitute a public record of popularopinion which accumulates over time and resurfaces in other discursive genres when embedded or alluded to in oriki (praise poetry) and in ittn (history).17 During the festival of Orisha Oniyi which I attended in Ejigbo quarter (in 1984), for example, the celebrants were 'praised' with an Oroyeye song which warned against cult fission: Omo Efigbo, E md pin orisa se eta. Childrenof Ejigbo, Do not split yourorishainto three. When I initially inquired about this text, I was told that it was simply a praise for Orisha Oniyi, but eventually I learned its 'secret' as a veiled attack against Chief Qbasun, who was elevated above Chief Qbasalo by the Ata Eshubiyi to represent the Ejigbo quarterin the king's council of civil chiefs (iwarfai). Since Chief Obasiun originated from Obo Ora, he was not considered a bona fide Iye native, and was resented by the more 'senior' lye chiefs, who saw their power bypassed by a 'stranger' in collusion with the new Ata. To consolidate his local power base, Chief Qbasiunclaimed a title in Orisha Oniyi through his mother, thereby 'splitting' the cult into a third lineage segment (Fig. 3).18 The Oroyeye text was thus produced as a warning against Eshubiyi's political strategy of imposing 'stranger' chiefs over Iye A (1) I l (2) I(3)1 Obasun FIG.3 Lineagesegmentationand fission. THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 75 quarters,but in concrete terms the warning failed, and today Chief Qbasun ranks first among the civil chiefs. Resurrectedas a 'praise' during the Orisha Oniyi festival of 1984, the text registered the political resentment of the displaced chiefs in Ejigbo quarter,and could resurface again if Chief Qbsasun loses his grip and is subject to attack by powerful rivals. Such strategies of indirection are not typical of all Oroyeye texts but seem to occur when their recommended outcome is uncertain. The songs of warning against Eshubiyi and Chief Qbasun do not identify their culprits by name but refer to the ritual icons and associations through which they accumulated power, as in the calabash crown of Orisha Ojuna and the cult of Orisha Oniyi in Ejigbo quarter. The songs thereby objectify ritual as the medium of power competition, as if to stake their challenge and retreat within the interpretive ambiguities which ritual sustains. But not all Oroyeye texts work that way, and when political conditions are right, direct accusations hit their mark like the verbal arrows of incantations (Qof). For example, when Ayede's infamous Ata Gabriel Osho began to rule autocratically-intimidating his chiefs and punishing his critics-local constituencies and subordinatetowns within the district turnedagainst him in an historic power struggle which he eventually lost when deposed and exiled in 1935 (Apter, 1992: 78-81). During this struggle, when the townspeople assembled in the market place to voice their grievances against the king, Gabriel Osho was accused of stealing goats, a charge of heinous antisociality, since goats roam freely in Yoruba towns, unattended for days. The theft of such goats is thus a serious breach of community trust, and when such an accusation is directed against a king it signals public disaffection.19Soon afterwards,the Oroyeye cult amplified this accusation in a song of abuse which devotees sang at the palace and throughoutthe town: Ikokot'6 knkeran k6 adiye. Ilnjile. Ode wonyi e maa kiyesi Wontik6kebukebu. SpottedHyenasteals goats and chickens. It is serious[lit. 'deep'].20 You hunterstake notice. He takes indiscriminately. In addition to its general defamatory thrust, several features of the song text warrant special consideration. First, the cognomen 'Spotted Hyena' comes from the praise name (oriki) of the first Ata, Eshubiyi, the original infamous warrior king who usurped the kingship to inaugurate his ruling dynasty. Since the praise name, with high office, devolves down the royal lineage, it also denotes the ruling incumbent. Thus if 'Spotted Hyena' referred historically to the first Ata who 'stole' the crown from the lye dynasty, it also referred more immediately to his patrilineal descendant Gabriel Osho, who 'stole', as it were, from the public trust. This double interpretationis supported by the fact that the song-like all Oroyeye songs-was sung in lye dialect, as indicated by inijil~ ('it is serious', or literally 'deep'), which uses a high tone /i/ rather than a high tone /6/ to mark the third person 76 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE singular, literally invoking the lye quartersin Ayede. As such, it recuperates the cult's previous if unsuccessful campaign against Eshubiyi's encroaching 'calabash crown', thereby framing the struggle against Gabriel Osho within an original struggle against the Eshubiyi ruling house. Furthermore, the hunters who were advised to take note of the theft were of course the armed guardians of the community, and their invocation raises the threat of armed insurrectionagainst Gabriel Osho. Moreover, reference to the thief as 'WOn' (followed by the continuous present tense marker/i/) employs the formal or distanced style of third person address in Yoruba (in a sense, the royal 'he' becomes 'they'), indicating in no uncertain terms that the present incumbent is the target of attack. And finally, since the grandmothers (yeye) sang the song, the accusation was ritually sanctioned and de facto true, beyond dispute. The eventual deposition of Gabriel Osho does not illustrate the ultimate efficacy of Oroyeye songs as media of political action, since many other factors (including the judgement of the District Officer) were involved in the power struggle, and the king might have survived the crisis had he played his cards differently. What is illustrated, however, is how such songs of abuse brought a repressed past (the usurpation of the lye chiefs) to bear upon the present (the political crimes of Gabriel Osho), through a poetics of shifting references and revelations which channelled and articulatedcollective action against the king. Not all targets, however, are so lofty, and not all songs so serious. To grasp Oroyeye's broader discursive field, we can focus on the festival itself, as celebrated in April 1983. SEXUAL POLITICS The Oroyeye festival began after sundown in the market place, where Ayede's youths convened beneath the darkness of a new moon.21 No light was allowed. The kerosene lamps of the night marketwere extinguished, and flashlights were banned. It was the opening ceremonial Ajakadi, or wrestling match, when the young men of Ayede's junior age sets divide the town into two 'sides', one called Isaoye, representing the four 'original' lye quarters which migrated under Eshubiyi's protection to their present location during the nineteenth century wars, the other called Odoalu, representing the quarters of 'strangers' who emigrated to Ayede from the Ikole and Yagba TABLE1. Ritual remapping of Isaoye and Odoalu quarters Ayede quarters Town 'sides' Assoc. subordinate towns 1 2 3 4 Isaoye Ejigbo Owaiye Ilaaro 'Isaoye' (indigenes) lye Omu Itapaji 5 Odoalu 6 Egbe Oba 'Odoalu' (strangers) Ipao Irele Oke-Ako THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 77 areas (including Alu) farthest east (Table 1). The town was thus organised into two wrestling teams of indigenes and strangers. Each side was stratified by equivalent age sets which carry the same name but meet on alternating fortnights during the year. The wrestling would last for fourteen nights, ascending from younger to older contestants. The atmosphere was jovial but tense as reputations rose and fell with each match. For if the young men fought with their bodies, it is here that the young girls of Isaoye and Odoalu fought with words, praising the winners with flattery (iyin) and insulting the losers with abuse (eebu).2 Their stated goal was to provoke the anger of the loser, although such abuse is always cast in the spirit of a joke (afJ in lye dialect, ,fJ? in standard Yoruba). The Ajakadi opened with the young women of Odoalu hurling general insults against their female counterpartsfrom the Isaoye 'side': Oni iya bi a pa, Isaioye ri a lo, Isaoye suie! Aldbe rir6 t6t6, Ak6fiisi ok6. Ojo in se yin ni, Aberii i ba in? (5) Isaoye r6 doko loja, A dbbo de'le pi, Epipd bbb re sijo loja (10) Okurun muyeye Eleko bee k6 adie. Only someonewho will die in poverty Will go (andjoin) Isaoye. Isaoyebullshit! You with drippingvaginas, Victims of penis dirt. Are you ashamed, Or do you feel afraid? No way! It is the (womenof) Isaoye who are promiscuousin the marketplace, Draggingthe earthwith theirvaginas, The scabs of yourvaginashave scaled off in heapsin the marketplace. Ladyvictims of scabies, Your mouthsare like chickenbeaks. (5) (10) The insults are transparentenough. The Odoalu girls are putting the rival side down as disgraceful and impoverished, implying that no Odoalu girl in her right mind would marry into Isaoye (given virilocal residence patterns). Isaoye girls, moreover, are debased and polluted-sleeping with unclean men, their vaginas drip from infections. Ratherthan feel shame or fear, these girls spread their venereal contagions in the market place, where their vaginal scabs form 'heaps' from their excessive promiscuity. To top it off, Isaoye girls are ugly, with mouths like chicken beaks. 78 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE Following these general sexual insults, the song texts become more specific, cursing the male wrestler-named Taye-from Isaoye so that he will fall: Biri gbe. Oyi gbe. Tdye eletii n'nu, Ibaje a ba tere je, ibaje.23 (5) Let him be carriedby the wind, Let him be carriedby dizziness, Taye, whose stomachis full of gunpowder, May all thatis yoursbe spoilt, May it be spoilt. (5) Taye, as it turned out, did lose the fight, in a battle that echoed men's agonistic struggles against visible and invisible enemies. His defeat was not only personal but seemed to bring Isaoye down with him as the chorus of insults shifted its attack: Ade r6 di, Bi oni koyin. The crownhas thumpeddown, Like a bunchof palm kernels. In this historically layered insult not only has Taye been deposed like a king, but, more seriously, he has let his 'side' down. Hailing from an lye lineage in Isaoye, his failure not only recalls the historic failure of the lye ruling dynasty to keep the crown from Eshubiyi but also echoes Gabriel Osho's shameful deposition in 1935, which was led largely by 'big men' in the Odoalu quarterof Ayede and Yagba subordinatetowns.2 Finally, as the past is brought to bear upon the present, the fallen wrestler reminds Isaoye's 'side' that even the currentruling house is vulnerable from attack by Odoalu wrestlers and warriors.25 If such humiliations are painful, however, they are temporary. In the next match, Isaoye's chorus turns to taunt their tormentors: Odbalu, Beemhb niki, Abogan wo mo 'ydn. Qmode e gun'gi ogede, A y. bddrd, ase wi. (5) E bd ti m6n ja, e wi si a, Iwbwb so un gb6 l6ko? Odoalu si ko o? Gbogbo won 16 ti doko lo, Odbial d'ouko. B'ale bd le, A fon fere pol6k6. (10) THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE Odbalu pa tira si bebe, Jinginni-jinginni, Ok6 16 jd a dniu poo. 79 (15) O nirune nirun, Odbolu did6 ni ponki! 0 n se kuru, Obb Ajayi n se kuru wowo. Oni e m'6bbs'ahun, Afeni ok6 re bd ro. (20) Isdpa toro mo'ydn, Odoilu toro m'6k6 gbonin. Odbolukbi tera po, Oni 16yfinsi gege, OweleweMlelek6 beek6 adie. (25) (People of) Odoalu, Protruding stomach like the bieembe drum. One whose fangs hold fast to the pounded yam, A child that climbs the banana tree Will slide down and fall from it. (5) You shouldn't have attempted bashing us with chants. Naked ones, can you hear us on the farm? Where is Odoalu? All of them have gone whoring. Odoalu has become a he-goat. (10) When the evening comes, The owner of a penis is beckoned with a whistle. Odoalu girls add amulets to their waist beads, Jinginni-jinginni. It is the penis that breaks it away. (15) With or without [pubic] hair, The vaginas of Odoalu are meant for constant copulation. Giving out hot steam, Ajayi's vagina is giving out hot steam profusely. Oni is generous with her vagina, Only one whose penis is impotent [cannot have intercourse with her]. (20) [Just as] The sorrel soup clings to the pounded yam, [So do] Odoalu girls cling to the penis. Odoalu is never united, People with pregnant necks [i.e. goitres], Mouths like chicken beaks. (25) Isaoye's reply is reciprocally obscene and direct. Comparing their stomachs 80 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE to the b,ihmbedrumcasts a doubleinsultto the peopleof Odoalu,since the b,tmbe is basic to Odoalu'sfestivalof OrishaIyagba,symbolisingits ritual Thusthe peopleof Odoalu,andtheirritual, powerandeasterlyprovenance.26 are ugly. They are furthermoregreedy gluttons,devouringpoundedyam with their 'fangs'. And if Isaoye's crown falls down the palm tree like a bunchof palmkernels,the childrenof Odoalucannoteven makeit to the top of the banana tree, but slide down trying. Lines 6-7 introduce a metapragmaticwarning not to fight with speech, relegating Isaoye's opponentsto the marginsof society and earshot,naked on their farms. Odoalugirls are accusedof similarpromiscuity,whistlingat night for any man who walks by, using medicinesin theirwaist beads to attractsexual partners,and copulatingbefore puberty.Lines 18-22 targetspecific girls reputedto be 'flirts', while the charge that Odoaluas a whole is 'never united'attacksthe quarter'spoliticalintegrity. In whatwas a gendereddivisionof rituallabour,youngmenof Isaoyeand Odoalufoughteach otherto defendthe reputationof theirrespective'sides', while young women abused each other to defame the reputationof the opposing 'side'. The sanctionedobscenitieswere clearly uproarious,the vulgaritiesunthinkablein any otherpubliccontext,yet the gamewas played for real stakes.For the young men, victory meanta bigger reputationand better chances with the eligible young women.27Meanwhile,the young women could vent theirtonguesand curse theirrivalswhile surveyingthe availablemale talent. By overstatingfemale sexuality,by permittingthe impermissiblein hyperbolicritualdiscourse,andby disclosingthatwhichis 'normally'repressed,youngmen andwomencouldinitiatesexualliaisonsin What are the that dangeroustwilightzone of pre-maritalexperimentation. limitsof the game?Clearlythe voicedparodiesof women'sunbridledsexual appetitesestablisha collective limitation,but these remainabstract.The images of rampantsexuality are hilariousbecause they are absurd.But personalattacksmakethe abstractconcrete,andthe absurdsuddenlyserious. We saw how two young women of Odoaluwere singled out by name and humiliated.For them the message was more than just a warningnot to overstepthe limits of acceptableromanticcirculation.It constituteda social sanction,a text for the archiveof collectivememorieswhich could actually hurttheirchancesof a desirablemarriage.28 In the larger context of Oroyeye as a whole, the Ajikadi wrestling remainedfun-and-games.It provided a nocturnalbackdropfor the real of Oroyeye, businessof the festival, which belongs to the 'grandmothers' who targetspecific malefactorsand bring their misdeedsinto the light of day. What concerns us at this preliminarypoint in the festival is the constructionof a basic parallelismbetween male political competition throughwrestlingand female sexual competitionthroughsong, or, more simply,betweenthe returnof the politicallyand sexuallyrepressed.These two modalitiesof 'permitteddisrespect'displacethe represseddesiresof the socio-politicalcollectivityon to specific individualsin the community.If at night the sexual sub-text dominatedthe discourse, in the daytime the politicalsub-texttook over. THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 81 POETICJUSTICE 'Anybody can join the Oroyeye cult, but the real people doing it are from Owaiye,' was the reply when I asked how members were recruited. Given the layers of secrecy surrounding Yoruba ritual associations, it is never entirely clear to those on the outside (or even to some on the inside) who all the members are. Oroyeye is reserved exclusively to women, yet I eventually learned that their real leader was the Ar6, an elderly man from the Imela lineage in Owaiye who also held the second highest post within Ayede's senior age set (called Erokesin). The connection between male age sets and Oroyeye during the wrestling matches thus extends up the generational ladder through a hidden set of overlapping memberships or points of articulation which become clear only when mapped within the kingdom's entire socio-political organisation and compared with the less centralised village clusters surroundingAyede, including the now subordinate town of Iye itself.29 In its basic contours, the Oroyeye cult of women intersects with that level of the senior male age set which includes the four Iye quarters (called iye-merin) of the Isaoye 'side' but excludes the 'stranger' quartersof Omole-Akodi and Egbeoba which form the Odoalu 'side'. This is why the Aro of Oroyeye is the No. 2 man in Erokesin. The No. 1 elder of Erokesin stands at the apex of the entire age-set system of the whole town (and kingdom, since he heads all age sets of Ayede's subordinate towns), including the Odoalu 'side'. In addition to age-set stratification, the Oroyeye cult also articulates with lineage organisation, through a very simple form of ancestor worship called AawQ. In this fairly low-key sacrifice, the lineage or household head places handfuls of pounded yam with some meat and melon seed (guisi) soup on the grave of an apical ancestor, adding palm oil, kola nut, and the blood of a cock while asking for protection. The ceremony is consciously associated with Oroyeye, since the two are performed together and form part of a greater ritual complex which not only distinguishes Ayede's Iye indigenes from Yagba 'strangers' but extends the division throughoutthe historic kingdom at large. Of Ayede's subordinatetowns, Iye, Itapajiand Omu performAaw9 and celebrate Oroyeye, whereas the Yagba towns of Irele, Oke Ako and Ipao do not.30 The important point is that Ayede, Iye, Itapaji and Omu perform the AawQ sacrifice and celebrate the Oroyeye festival at the same time in their respective ritual calendars, bringing the protection of ancestors to bear upon local events while mobilising an Iye-centric ritual field within the wider kingdom. As we shall now see, the historic allusions of Oroyeye songs resurrect the former glory and unity of Iye in idioms of common descent, while the cult's indictments appear to gravitate around lineage fission. The inner core of Oroyeye priestesses were eight in number during the first festival which I attended, but not all were present, since some were too old to make the rounds. With the two senior representatives dressed in the white cloth of purity and death-as elderly 'grandmothers' they are already entering the other world-the cult took possession of the town, proceeding from household to household for seven days of ritualised evaluation.31I was told that they proceed to the king's palace and abuse him first, after which they abuse Yeye, the deity herself, but I was unable to confirm that this 82 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE actually occurred. What I did record during several festival outings was a variety of discourse styles or genres, ranging from a relatively fixed stock of ritual refrains to contingent, context-specific accusations and curses against named malefactors. In ethno-linguistic terms, the priestesses began by singing ijuba, an act of propitiating ancestors to guide the devotees throughout the festival, which involves singing oriki ('praises') and praying for prosperity. As they approached each house with ancestral propitiations their praises were repaid with money, which in turn triggered prayers that the household would prosper. There is perhaps an element of ritual blackmail in this, since a household head could be seen as paying off the priestesses for registering a positive report. But the logic of investment and returnsis more complex, since by recognising the power of the cult, and investing in its ritual protection, the addressee's name and status is effectively validated. Such payments are understood as thanks to the ancestors for keeping the household free from scandal-a literal payment of homage.32 Moreover, when an addressee is indicted by the cult, there are no praises to repay, and hence no opportunities for buying protection. In more formal terms, the ijfub follows a parallel structure of four-line stanzas, the first two lines of which are fluid and variable, indexing the addressee with the appropriate oriki, flattery (iyin) or prayer (adura); the second two lines are fixed and repetitive, paying homage to the cult's founding ancestor from lye. As such the ijubaiis a double homage, the first to the living, the second to the dead, bringing the former into the protective custody of the latter through the very speech act itself, as well as through the subsequent reciprocal payments. The following stanzas illustrate this pattern with paradigmatic simplicity: A-ti-Kekere j'ol6gun, Mo mc a kan ni re o. Ad jtbd air6onile, 'Mo aseje 'ye. Omo tile ol6ri-lelsi, Ori ddra aibo. (5) Aa jiub Ar6 onile, 'Mo aseje 'ye. He who becomesa commanderfromchildhood, I am bowing low to you. We shall pay homageto Aro Owner-of-the-land, Offspringof lye by blood.33 Childof the head of Ilesi (lineage), May you have a good destiny[lit. may your headbe good]. We shall pay homageto Aro Owner-of-the-land, Offspringof lye by blood. (5) In these typical if ordinaryexamples, the first two lines of each stanza reward specific individuals-and by extension their lineages-for correct behaviour toward the cult and in the community. Thus, in lines 5-6, the Ilesi lineage in Owaiye quarteris praised through one of its sons. The text combines an oriki ('Child of the head of Ilesi') with a prayer ('May you have a good destiny') THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 83 whichsimultaneouslyidentifiesthe 'head'of theIlesi lineagewiththedestiny ('head') of the addressee.This fluid, contingentlyvariablecoupletcontrasts withthe fixed refrainof the secondcouplet,the 'homage'to Aro,ownerof the land, which identifies the importantfounding ancestorfrom Iye and, by extension,all descendants'by blood'.34The allusionshereare 'deep'.Aro is identifiedas the founderof Oroyeye,who broughtthe cult from Ife to Iye, whereafterit travelledto Ayede.As 'Owner-of-the-land' he maybe relatedto the deity(Onile)of the OgboniSociety(calledEmpein Iye), associatinghim with the collective authorityto judge cases of incest, witchcraftand crimes againstthe earth(Morton-Williams, 1960b).Thisis supportedby the factthat Abraham(1962: 65) glosses 'Aro' as 'one of the OgboniTitleholders'and thatthe Morganreportfor OndoStateidentifiesAro as first in rankamong Iye's five 'traditional'kingmakers(afqbajr), which are chiefly offices investedwith ritualpowerto install,depose and burythe king.35Given the 'mini-state'structureof north-eastYorubavillage clusters,with kingmakers vested in age sets (Forde, 1951: 79-80; Krapf-Askari,1966: 5-9, 12-13), it is likely thatthe Aro was the seniortitle of Iye's complexage-setorganisation. (Fordetailssee Apter,1992:40-5.) In any case, line 8, 'Offspringof Iye by blood',refersto the firstArowho was bornin Iye butimplicitlyalludesto the 'original'Iye corewithinAyede.Takentogether,the fixedrefrainof lines3-4 and 7-8 ground the power and authorityof Oroyeye's discourse in an historicalcharterof Iye kingshipand kinship,a groundingin the sanctified powerof the earthitself as protectorof one blood. Thus even the simplest Oroyeye songs deploy complex discursive strategies. If the first flexible couplet tags specific individualsthrough their family names, implicatingthem in wider social groups, the second fixed coupletbringsthemintoIye's politico-ritualcommunity,to whichthey must'pay' homage.Not all Oroyeyehomagefollows this strictpattern,since the first coupletcan expandinto multiplelines, dependingon the lengthof the oriki,prayeror proverbchanted.In some songs, deities such as Shango, OgunandOrishaIyagbaor spiritualclasseslike the beingsof earthor heaven are addressed,while in othersthe town as a whole is imploredto co-operate (which,given the mountingtensionsof the imminent1983 elections,was no casual command).36At times the Oroyeyesingers addressthemselvesand foregroundtheirverbalart: Ol6rin mda gbo, Aldfe ni i r6nikeje. A d 'jiubaAro Onile, 'Mo aseje 'ye. Afere bi somi-yin, Isogbe-ta 'kun-yan. A d 'juba Ar6 Onile, 'MQaseje ye. Listen,singers, Aldfe has sent us to deliverthese messagesfor seven days. We shall pay homageto Aro Owner-of-the-land, Offspringof Iye by blood. (5) 84 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE Wind (that is) like knocking out teeth [i.e. a force to be reckoned with], (5) Have you forgotten? Let me quickly remind you [lit. mark it with a rope],37 We shall pay homage to Aro Owner-of-the-land, Offspring of lye by blood. In these two stanzas the singers signal a coming shift from 'homage' to accusation, as they identify themselves as incriminating agents (line 2) whose forceful speech, capable of knocking out teeth (line 5), not only punishes the guilty but also polices collective memory (line 6). By drawing attention to the danger of their speech in this warning, the Oroyeye priestesses prepare the indexical ground for highlighting negative 'figures' in the community. In the Oroyeye festival of 1983 public enemy No. 1 was identified as a man named Oladiran. True, the Ata of Ayede was mildly rebuked for his poverty and political impotence, but the real vindictive drama focused on the heinous crime of a money-magic murder. As the priestesses reached the culprit's house their homage (ijuiba) switched to curse (epe): Qlddiran, TiM ria rai berb re o. lie 6 ko sile rian logbNn-on Oke-Odo. Qmo o bd bd sire, Wo o be e ddjule orun. Ode 6 perin 16ko 0 mo jrit 'd 'le o. Qlddiran, 6-gbe-ni-pa, 0 mo d'Esi s'6orn re ... Ewu re se'pon 'd 'Ie. (10) Olddiran, Qre o gbe a mu s'ow6, Mo r6 d'Esu sorun re, O-w.ewu-eje-d-'e. Oladiran, All of us are asking for you. The house you built in their compound at Oke-Odo. The child should have been playing with, You instead sent to heaven [i.e. killed]. The hunter does not kill an elephant Without [at least] bringing its tail home. Oladiran, One-who-kidnaps-to-kill, Eshu is on your neck [you are in trouble/stigmatised] ... Your cloth is stained with blood on your way home. (5) (10) Oladiran, Ore, whom you used to make money [for money-making jiuju medicine], Has become the Eshu on your neck, One-who-wears-bloody-cloth-on-his-way-home. In contrast to the homage, the curse identifies the addressee by his personal name only, conspicuously avoiding his oriki-oril4 (lineage praise name). In THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 85 effect, Oladiran is nominally isolated from his kinsmen and all other social relations. His house is identified by its place name (Oke Odo, or the lower hill, lit. 'near the river') but not its lineage name, which remains suppressed. He is then accused of killing his kinsman (identified as Ore in line 12) for the egregious crime of money-magic. The story was explained to me with alacrity.38 What follows is a free translation of the recorded explanation which was narratedin situ: Oladiranhadan elderbrother(egbQn)namedOre,bornof the samefatherbutof differentmothers.Orelived in Ayede,whereasOladiranhadmovedto the townof Idanre.39 OnedayOladirancameto Ayede andinvitedthe elderbrotherto returnto Idanrewith him. When Ore refused, Oladirancompelled his elder brotherto accompanyhim. Fourdays afterthey left, Oladirancame back home (to Ayede) and startedaskingfor Ore,saying, 'Whereis my elderbrother?'Thenthose who saw themleave Ayede togetherreplied,'Haven'tyou drivenhim awayfor the last four days?' Thereafterthe relativessent people to go with him in quest of his brotherat Idanre.After gettingthere,Oladirantook the searchteam to trackthe forest.Aftersearchingthe forestwithoutsuccess,they returnedhome. Whenthese relativesgave the reportof theirabortiveeffortto locate Ore, the familydecidedto senda new groupto Idanre.Thesemenweresentas emissariesto the king of Idanrehimself. They were instructedto tell the king that an Ayede nativewas lost in Idanre,andthathe mustbe found.The kinggave thema cheerful welcome, and told them that humanbeings would never get lost in his domain withoutgoodcause.Oladiranwas thereforesummonedto confesswherehe kepthis elder brother.The elder brother'sson went aheadwith the police and arrested Oladiran.They did everythingpossiblebut his whereaboutsremaina mysteryto this day.Oladirannow lives in Ayede, and,it beingthe timeof Oroyeye'sfestival, he hasbecomea targetof Oroyeye'scastigatingsongs.Theyhavegone to his house at Oke Odo (abovethe stream,northof the river,downthe hill area,the southern partof town).They are also singingin the homesof the membersof his family. I have quoted this passage at length because it provides an illuminating example of how a sub-text is glossed by ritual speech. (See also Barber, 1990, 1991a, for sub-texts glossed by oriki.) In this performative context the full story (itan), normally known only to insiders, was freely proffered, since Oroyeye's task is to bring such misdeeds into the light of day. Oladiran is accused of leaving no trace of his brother. He is accused of kidnapping Ore and killing him for money-making medicine. Oladiran is in big trouble; indeed, Eshu is on his neck. His cloth is stained with the blood of his kinsman. In lines 8 and 12 Oladiranis effectively renamed. His lineage name is replaced with the incriminating aliases One-who-kidnaps-to-kill and Onewho-wears-bloody-cloth-on-his-way-home.40 Soon afterwards, his house was confiscated by the Ata of Ayede, and Oladiran was jailed. Returning to the sub-text, we can see that there is more in this case than meets the eye. The fact that Oladiranand Ore were paternalhalf-brothersmay be significant because it is precisely between sons of the same father and different mothers that Yoruba lineage segmentation and fission occur (Lloyd, 1955). The money-magic crime thus appears motivated by a structuraldrama of lineage dynamics, since, whatever actually happened, Ore's disappearance and Oladiran's return home would have shifted the lineage headship (and some of its corporately entailed property) to Oladiran, weakening Ore's 86 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE O=A Ore i FIG.4 =0 j zI \ Oladiran Lineagesegmentationand fission. lineage segment and possibly transferring Ore's house to Oladiran, since Yoruba family titles and properties can move 'sideways' before moving 'downwards' (Lloyd, 1962: 306; Goody, 1970). In this respect, the fact that Ore's son arrested Oladiran can be seen as an act of filial vengeance which pre-empted the lateral transmission of Ore's lineage title and property to Oladiran, and rerouted it vertically to the son himself (Fig. 4). As for Oladiran,we can only conjecture. Perhaps he did kidnap and murder Ore to make money-magic with his 'head' and body parts, and got caught. Or perhaps he killed Ore to gain his title and property, a crime which was configured in the idiom of money-magic. Maybe he was innocent, the victim of a terribleplot or of misfortune. One thing is certain. After Oroyeye's verbal strike Oladiranwas considered guilty by the town, despite the fact that he was acquitted in court, owing to lack of evidence. Banished from his house, he rented a room in anotherpart of town, gradually lost his mind, and, according to popular reports, dropped dead at a crossroads ten years later in 1993. CONCLUSION To address the broadersignificance of the Oroyeye festival, we have tried to relocate its abusive texts in their historical and performativecontexts. Within the historical context of Ayede kingdom, we have seen how the cult has had an active 'voice' in important political affairs, including the negotiation of dynastic succession and the deposition of Gabriel Osho. In this respect the voice of the 'grandmothers'has not been exactly neutral but has consistently championed the political claims of the displaced Iye chiefs. By resurrectinga repressed history-the usurpation by the Ata Eshubiyi of the lye ruling line-the cult reproduces an historical template of Ayede's founding which is brought to bear on contemporary events in order to explain and shape them. Part of the power of Oroyeye in Ayede, I would argue, is the returnof the politically and historically repressed, in that the desire of the lye order to re-establish its pre-eminence is ritually mobilised and discursively 'canalised' (to return to Evans-Pritchard'soriginal term) by the cult's very shifting from homage (ijtiba) to abuse (af#, eebu). If the priestesses protect the 'town' by disclosing the crimes of specific scoundrels, they also protect a specific definition of the town, as 'offspring of lye by blood'. When the Oroyeye priestesses take possession of the town, they therefore remake it in THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 87 the image of Iye, the indeed sanctified 'ground' of the cult's more personalised invective. If the old women of Oroyeye sing for the old Iye order, restoring it rhetorically if not politically in Ayede, the younger girls represent both 'sides' during the nocturnal wrestling contests. In the event the town is ritually remapped into Isaoye and Odoalu, terms which, as we have seen, normally refer to two of Ayede's six quarters but are here extended to embrace Iye 'indigenes' (four quarters)and Yagba 'strangers' (two quarters) as organised by age sets. As the young men wrestle to promote their names and protect their ground, the young women sing jocular obscenities to defend their side and defame their rivals, both collectively (as Isaoye v. Odoalu) and personally by name. The 'political' contest between indigenes and strangers is thus explicitly sexualised by sanctioned obscenities. Political and sexual contexts (competition) and sub-texts (desire) are reciprocally encoded to augment the power of Oroyeye with the return of the sexually repressed. And, as we have seen, this power is not merely displaced into harmless palliatives through collective catharsis but is effectively channelled on to targeted culprits through the pragmatics of ritual speech. This interpretation of Oroyeye can be further developed by framing it within more culturally coherent terms, as a regionally and historically specific expression of Yoruba female power more generally. As I have argued elsewhere, Yoruba women are distinguished from men by two inversely related powers: the procreative power of fertility and the deadly power of witchcraft. If it is according to their 'secret' that women give birth, it is also with their 'secret' that they take life, by consuming the life essence of their kinsfolk, be they co-wives, collaterals, or even their own children, although it is more common for a witch to attack the child of a co-wife. The Yoruba witch is technically a cannibal, since she transforms herself into a witch bird and sucks the blood of her victims until the death. Wealthy women are sometimes accused of exchanging their victims for financial gain, offering a child to a coven in return for illicit profit. All this is, of course, copiously documented by a fairly extensive scholarly and popular literature, and emerges as a common concern among diviners (babaldwo) and medical specialists (onisguin), in newspapers and in elite households, and among Christians, Muslims, and politicians as well.41 Since witchcraft, like fertility, is endemic to Yoruba womanhood, all women are potential witches, and a woman becomes a witch and joins a coven (?gbe) when her witchcraft power is activated. Usually it will happen after menopause, when the woman's procreative fluids have been exhausted and her blood congeals inward. Thus if fertility and witchcraft are antithetical female powers, each may dominate the other at different times in a woman's life. This diachronic dimension of fertility and witchcraft corresponds clearly to the two basic components of the Oroyeye festival-the Ajakadi nocturnal wrestling and the daytime procession of the 'grandmothers'. In the former, unmarriedgirls at the height of puberty and fertility sing songs of excessive sexuality, whereas in the latter old women past their childbearing years wreak havoc on public offenders. Each category of singers exemplifies the antithetical powers of fertility and witchcraft, and, with these powers in mind, the 'canalising' logic of abuse can be spelled out more clearly. 88 'HE SANCFITYOF ABUSE (1) (2) *&\ A =0 0=A\ A FIG.5 Lineagesegmentationand fission. Foregrounding the female voice, as Oroyeye does, we might say that the unmarried girls displace male power competition into explicit idioms of female sexuality, which they celebrate and control, and thus effectively transform into socially sanctioned powers of social reproduction. By allowing sexual images to run amok while identifying actual 'flirts' in the town, the singers direct potentially rampantsexuality and unbounded desire toward 'legitimate' fertile unions. The homology between male wrestling and female sexual competition can be seen as a ritual transformation, a conversion of male violence into female sexuality and fertility. Nor is such a transformation 'purely' symbolic, judging from the nocturnal liaisons that occur during the festival.42 As for the grandmothers, they can be seen as powerful witches who convert their infertility and malice into socially recognised punitive sanctions. By routing out evildoers they use their witchcraft to protect the town from its enemies within. In this respect, the case of Oladiran is revealing, not only of the dire consequences of ritual abuse but of the cultural logic which motivates it. During my investigations I was struck by the large proportion of Oroyeye songs which focus on individuals implicated in lineage fission. One man who was accused of stealing land from his brother had moved away from his patrilocal compound to set up house on his wife's family land (Fig. 5). Although the 'crime' concerned farmland,was he guilty of lineage fission? Recall the Oroyeye song warning Orisha Oniyi not to split its cult into three by generating a third lineage matrisegment. These and many other examples suggest that the 'witchcraft' which normally focuses on the position of women in lineage segmentation and fission-since. following Lloyd (1955), it is children of the same fathers but different mothers who generally divide-is transformed by the grandmothers of Oroyeye into the crimes of men.43 In this respect, Oladiran's crime is paradigmatic. He not only initiated lineage fission but did so by killing his half-brother and using his body for making money, thereby mirroring the cannibalistic appetites of witches who are believed to profit by consuming their kin. Oladiran was, in effect, a male witch. For this crime against society, isolated and broken, the man died. For whom, then, do the priestesses of Oroyeye speak? We have identified a number of localised answers, ranging from young girls and old women to the old Iye order and the kingdom of Ayede at large. We have argued that, as THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 89 a specific ritual genre, Oroyeye songs encode a particularhistoricity,a template of dispossessionand repressionwhich maps on to all sorts of contemporaryrelations, and is itself an historical consequenceof Iye's experiencein the foundingand developmentof Ayede.44And it is to this local level of embeddedmeaningsandcon/textualstrategiesthatstudentsof oral literatureandritualdiscoursein Africashouldattend,if we areto grasp the historyandpoliticsof linguisticpractices.45 FollowingEvans-Pritchard's lead, we have shown how the 'canalisingfunctions'of obscenityand abuse can be discursivelycontextualisedin relationto homage and praise, and locally historicisedin the repressedsocial memoryof lineage fission and 'sexual' politics. If relocatingritual texts in their performativecontexts illuminateshow they work, however, we need not remain in the local of specificspeechcommunities,and,with this in mind,we can particularities reflecton the more generalrelationshipbetweenOroyeyetexts and female power.Withinthe broadersocio-culturalcontextsof fertilityandwitchcraft, of Oroyeyespeak-with impunitythe young girls and old6grandmothers for all Yorubawomen. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr 'Dejo Afolayan for the initial transcription and translation of my Oroyeye tapes, and Mr Olusanya Ibitoye (of Ayede) for correcting specific translations and interpretations according to his intimate knowledge of the town and cult. Earlier versions of this article were presented in anthropology seminars at Manchester University (6 March) and University College London (10 March) in 1995. Particular thanks go to Sandy Robertson, Richard Werbner, Murray Last, Peter Morton-Williams, Akin Oyetade and William Rea for their valuable criticisms and comments. I also thank John Comaroff for his copious written comments on an earlier draft. My first fieldwork in Nigeria was funded by the US Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays) and the Social Science Research Council, from October 1982 to December 1984. I spent the first four months at the University of Ife, where I studied the Yoruba language intensively with Dr Karin Barber, Dr Akin Oyetade (then still a graduate student), and Mr Bayo Akanbi. Thereafter, on the advice of my official Nigerian adviser, Professor J. F. Ade Ajayi (University of Ibadan), I settled in Ayede Ekiti, in Ondo State. Follow-up research on Yoruba ritual language in 1990 (August-October) was funded by two small grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Philosophical Foundation, which allowed me to pursue the Oroyeye festival anew and investigate the Oladiran affair in some historical depth. Later, between June and December 1993, I was able to visit Ayede three times from Lagos, where I was conducting research on FESTAC '77. It was during the first of these visits (in July) that I learned of Oladiran's death at the crossroads. For all of this guidance, instruction and support I remain grateful. NOTES 1 See, for example, Radcliffe-Brown (1952), Gluckman (1954), and Turner (1967) for exemplary statements of these theoretical positions. For related discussions of licentious discourse as 'joking' see Junod (1927, especially the Annotatio quarta I, p. 516), Labouret (1929), Paulme (1939), Griaule (1948), and Apter (1983b). 2 See, for example, Evans-Pritchard(1965: 100 n. 1), who states that 'the explanation I have given here is largely in accord with psycho-analytical theory which would consider that the function of such obscenity is to act as a drive and palliative of labour, regarding the obscenities as a result of a clash between necessary labour (reality principle) and the desire to avoid exertion (pain-pleasure principle)', although he proceeds to distance himself from further of this thesis. developments 3 The concept of 'entextualisation' has been developed by Silverstein and associates to identify the discursive separation of text from context, which is in a sense the logical 90 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE complement of discursive contextualisation. For theoretical elaborations and applications of this perspective see Silverstein and Urban (1996). 4 After paying the fine and begging the Oroyeye cult for mercy, such a mild offender must sacrifice to his or her ancestors in a ceremony called Aawo. The connection between Oroyeye and lineage identity is discussed below. 5 According to one of the journal's anonymous referees the Edi festivals of the goddess Moremi celebrated in Ife also feature priestesses who 'indulge in obscene songs' and target evildoers. In addition, Ogunba (1982) cites interesting examples of what he calls satirical, political, and interrogatory genres of 'occasional festival songs', some of which are sung by women and resemble Oroyeye songs in content if not in form. He collected them from different Ijebu 'purification festivals' (1982: 37) but neglects to tell us which ones. Moreover, he argues that the songs developed out of earlier ritual genres into more secular performances. Certainly the political song praising Chief Obafemi Awolowo as a 'sanitary inspector' (1982: 43-5) is a of neo-colonial allegory. gem 6 The Drewals also cite Asiwaju (1975) and Olabimtan (1970). 7 The Drewals analyse the functions of Efe songs in terms of (1) incantation, (2) invocation, (3) social comment, (4) history, and (5) funeral commemoration, with more specific subdivisions (Drewal and Drewal, 1983: 40). These categories are indeed relevant to Oroyeye songs, and provide a useful heuristic for identifying textual strategies, but they remain descriptive, bearing no analytical relation to each other. From a more generative perspective, Yai (1989: 63) highlights the 'pre-performance criticism' and social production of Efe songs during the igbal? sessions of the Gelede society, which are off-limits to non-initiates. Ideally, I would provide comparable insights into the production of Oroyeye texts, but I had no access. 8 It is likely that Oro Efe and Oroyeye represent varieties of the Oro cult more generally, which is commonly known as a bull-roarercult reserved for men, and which is associated with the Osugbo (Ogboni) society among the Ijebu (Abraham, 1962: 484-5). That Oroyeye represents a 'female' voice in a male ritual complex brings the gender contrast into bold relief. But cf. Flynn (1997), who reveals that women traders are in fact significantly involved with Oro cults. 9 Although Abraham (1962: 678) glosses yeye as 'mother', my assistants in Ayede insisted on 'grandmother', emphasising women beyond their childbearing years. In Ekiti dialect, yeye is pronounced with two mid tones, as (un)marked throughout the text. One of the anonymous referees of this journal observes that Oroyeye may represent a generic praise name for the female ritual power found in many festivals and orisha cults, rather than a specific cognomen as such: '. . . I wish to query the name of this cult. Clearly the Ayede people refer to it as Oroyeye, but this strikes me as an oriki/adura-like epithet or invocation rather than a real name for an orisa such as Shango, Moremi, or Yemoja. During the Oshun festival in Oshogbo, for example, one could always hear the recurrentrefrain of orb yeye o . . .. chanted by the women who went to draw sacred water from the river. The same invocation could be heard also at the annual festivals of the river goddess Otin in Inisha, Okuku or Oyan.' Indeed, even in Ayede the priestesses of Orisha Iyagba sing the same epithet under similar conditions. I can only reply that indigenous testimony in Ayede repeatedly asserted that Oroyeye was the festival of grandmothers, and treated Iyeye as a deity. It is possible that the priestesses are allied with the Olua cult of Owaiye quarter. " For rigorous theoretical reformulations of the linguistic processes involved in the discursive production of context see the editors' introduction to Duranti and Goodwin (1992), with special reference to the essay by Hanks (1992). See also Silverstein (1976, 1993). 12 For details of the ritual mechanisms by which Eshubiyi effected this dynastic usurpation see Apter (1992: 45-69). 13 Alakoto also means 'girl no longer a virgin' (Abraham, 1962: 383), suggesting a possible third reference to the scandal of Eshubiyi's adulterous paternity, barring him from royal office as an illegitimate son of a civil chief. Mr Michael B. Ayeni adduced the text while recounting the story of Onimogun's impregnation of the Obasakan's wife (who, because she was married, was no longer a virgin) and the subsequent birth of Eshubiyi, the future king (personal interview, March 1984). I do not know if Mr Ayeni intended to convey this meaning of Alakoto in the text. 14 For a video clip of this 'calabash crown' during Ayede's Orisha Ojuna festival, 19 August 1993, see http://anthro.spc.uchicago.edu/-aapter/yea. THESANCTITY OFABUSE 91 15A baidl is like the kingof a town,butcannotenjoythe privilegesof kingshipbecausehis town is subordinateto a capital town with its properoba. Thus the baidl of Otunjais subordinateto the Elekoleof Ikole.Relationsbetweenkingsandtheirbadl., capitalsandtheir subordinatetowns,are fractious.In the widerkingdomof Ayede, I inciteda terrible'palaver' whenI askedthebadleof Ipao(one of Ayede's subordinate towns)abouthis relationto theAtd of Ayede. Since it was duringthe town's Ogunfestival, one of the Ati's wives, who is the Ol6gunof OrishaIyagba,attended.When the baidl. (whose title is Qbaila) assertedthathe was actuallya king,andthatIpaowas not subordinate to Ayede,theAti's wife flew intoa rage and roundlydenouncedhim. 16 The text was recited by the late MichaelB. Ayeni (personalinterview,March1984) to discreditthe legitimacyof the Eshubiyidynasty.An lye native,Ayeni was ever loyal to the Olu rulingdynasty.Duringour discussionI forgotto write down the Yorubatext. 17 For an illuminatinganalysisof the genderedassociationsof oriki with women and itan with men see Barber(1990: 330-4). 18 The cult of Orisha Oniyi was alreadydividedbetweenObasaluand Oloso segmentsof Ilewa lineage. See Apter(1987: 161-3) for details. 19On a basic structurallevel, the theftof a goat by a king invertsthe royalritualimperative of supplyinga goat to the townfor collectivesacrificeandprotection.In Ayede, the Ata must supplysuch a goat duringthe OrishaOjunafestival,whereasduringthe Yemojafestival he must provide a ram for Shango. It is interestingto note that when the Residentof Ondo Provinceinvestigatedthe allegationsagainstGabrielOsho,the theftof goatswas recordedas a literalcivil offence:'. . . a delegationof Ayede title holdersspokeon behalfof all andaccused the Ata of the theftof goats andstatedthatthey did not wish to acknowledgehim any longer' (Carr,1934: 1). 20 The song's assertionthatthe mattersurrounding the king's theftof chickensandgoats is 'deep' (jinle) offers a valuableglimpse into a more generalpropertyof deep knowledgein Yoruba hermeneutics,which is its capacity to challenge authoritystructuresand, when conditionsare right, breakout into open articulation.The truthof the cult's accusationagainstnone otherthan the king himself-is of coursepredicatedon its access to the deep knowledgeof the grandmothers. 21 The festivaldescribedbeganon 25 April1983.All the textsin this sectionwere recorded by me in situ. The songs of homageand incriminationin the next sectionwere recordedover the following seven days. 22 The termomoge,whichI am glossingas 'younggirls' and 'youngwomen',has no precise equivalentin English.It denotesthe specific statusand attributesof an attractiveunmarried youngwoman,presumablywithoutchildren,who is, as EdmundLeach(1958: 133) wouldsay, 'fairgamefora love affair'.Unmarried youngwomenwithchildrenaresometimesreferredto by theirfemaleage matesas 'afterone' (child)or 'aftertwo' (children)in NigerianEnglishslang. 23 This curse exemplifies one of the morphosyntacticfeatures which characterisease of nounforms(in this (power,performative efficacy)in ritualspeech,namelythe transposition example,ibaje)intoverbforms(in this example,b. ... je) withinthesameutterance.See also Drewal and Drewal (1987: 226) and Olatunji(1984: 152-64) for furtherdiscussion and permutationsof this grammaticaldevice. 24 The Yagba towns within the kingdomof Ayede, which are Oke Ako, Irele and Ipao, playeda decisive role in the depositionof Ata GabrielOsho. In 1934 they formeda Federal Society (joinedby Ayede's non-Yagbatownof Itapaji)to secede fromAyede districtandjoin with otherYagbatownsin whatwas thenthe NorthernProvince.They also rejectedthe Ata's tax notificationslips. In the interestsof districtunity,the DistrictOfficerdeposedthe Ata. 25 The same rebelliousthemeis rituallyexpressedin Ayede's OrishaIyagbafestival,when the Bal6gun A6fin's warriorpriestessescarry spears and cutlasses 'decorated'with palm fronds.See Apter(1992: 156-60) for details. 26 Fora detaileddiscussionof the distribution of this drumthroughoutYorubaland,in many cases followingNupe migrationsand festivals,see Thieme(1969: 146-72). 27 And to some extent,which I am unableto determinein any statisticalsense, the young men who fight each otherwill marryeach other'sclassificatory'sisters'. 28 As it turnedout, the young woman here referredto as Ajayi becamesecond wife to a mucholder,illiteratefarmer,a matchwhich accordingto her age matessuitedherprofligacy. 29 See for examplethe politico-ritual patternsfound in Ishanand its subordinatetown of Ilemesho(Apter,1995). 92 THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 30 It is interesting to note that this may well be the same Omu which Barber (1991b: 21) identifies in the oriki orile of ile Elemeso in Ikole as performed in Okuku. This correspondence demonstrates the utility of oriki as historical records of lineage migrations. 31 Most major orisha festivals are preceded by fund-raising visits of priestesses to households throughoutthe town. What distinguishes Oroyeye's visits is the explicit threatof ostracism. The seven-day 'outing' of the Oroyeye priestesses is identified in an announcement song: Oroyeye 6 de o, Oloro ari simi keje. Oroyeye has arrived, Owners of the festival that brings anxiety for seven days. 32 Hence the Oroyeye text 'I pay homage because the child that pays homage will not suffer or go astray.' For the first penetrating analysis of 'paying' for homage as status validation in Hausa society see Smith (1957). 33 This translation is idiosyncratic, since a.s.ej can be more literally rendered as 'one who bleeds' as well as 'which is the blood'. The 'descent' translation comes from Mr Olusanya Ibitoye, who, in correcting the original translation by 'Dejo Afolayan, consistently wrote, 'offspring of lye by blood'. Mr Afolayan, for the record, wrote, 'Offspring of he-who-pays the vow and lives', according to a very different morphosyntactic parsing which also makes sense in the socio-linguistic context of paying homage. Since Mr Ibitoye is an Ayede indigene with intimate knowledge of ritual language idioms, I have gone with his translation. This does not mean that Mr Ibitoye is right or even that both translations are mutually exclusive. But I do remain confident that Ibitoye's version represents the spirit if not the letter' of the dominant local meaning. 34 In a sense, the figure-ground distinction in the semantics of deixis (Hanks, 1992: 6(-71) extends here to the paradigmatic Oroyeye textual stanza, in which the first fluid (variant) couplet focalises a figure (usually a living person in the community) while the second, fixed (invariant) refrain relates this figure to the (indexical) ground. Is it by chance that Aro is also 'Owner-of-the-earth/ground'? 35 Actually the Morgan report provides two lists of kingmakers, an older list of nine titles and a more recent list of five. The report misidentifies several lineages with the wrong quarters. In both lists, however the Aro is ranked first. 1. Aro 2. Obalesi 3. Obalohun 4. Olole 5. Ala 6. Onire 7. Odofin 8. Obalopada 9. Obalero 1. Aro 2. Obalero 3. Ewi 4. Alamo 5. Amuwagun See also Krapf-Askari (1966: 6), who observes, 'Lists of orota titles obtained for different title systems in Kabba Province show a marked degree of concordance in styles and ranking, especially towards the top; the highest title is almost always Qbaro . . .' Finally, we should note that the meaning of 'kingmaker' was changed by the chieftaincy commission, in that civil offices were given priority over ritual offices when the two were differentiated. 36 Thus, for example: You should all walk together, E Sa jumo rin, Just as the deities walk together. Bi 'm9lee jumb re ye. A a juba Aro-Onile, We shall pay homage to Aro, owner of the land, 'Mo as.gejye. Offspring of lye by blood. For details of the election riots which followed, and their underlying ritual logic, see Apter (1992, 179-91). 37 These translations of lines 5 and 6 are rather free, based on Mr Olusanya Ibitoye's rendering of local idioms, which may not be found in standardYoruba but which ring clear to Ayede indigenes. The song is basically a warning to beware of the cult's power. THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 93 38 Anybodywho has triedto interviewYorubasaboutfamily andgenealogicalhistorywill knowhow reluctantlythey provideinformation,since familyhistoryis a privateaffair,full of disputesand secrets.Even simple householdsurveyquestionsring alarmbells over dubious paternities,unofficialwives, landtenure,even lineagedepthandspan.Normally,at least in a small town like Ayede, peoplewill neverdiscussthe affairsof otherfamilies,replyingthatif you want to know about X's family then go and ask them yourself.The zeal with which Oladiran'sstory was narratedto me by onlookers is itself ethnographicallysignificant, illustratinga suspensionof 'normal'discursiveconstraints. 39 For a descriptionof Idanreand its connectionswith Benin see the anonymousarticle 'Idanre', Nigeria Magazine 46 (1955), 154-80. 40 This image is particularly charged,since it invertsthe sartorialidiomof familysociality in 'familycloth' (aso ebi). Insteadof wearingthe clothof his kinsman,Oladiranwearsa cloth thatis stainedby the blood of his kinsman. 41 See, for example, Beier (1958), Belasco (1980), Morton-Williams(1956, 1960a), Thompson(1976), Drewal and Drewal (1983), Idowu (1970), Hoch-Smith(1978), Prince (1961), Matory (1994), Makinde (1988), Bastian (1993), and Apter (1993) for some discussions. representative 42 I do not meanto suggestthatthis ritualtransformation explainstheAjikadiwrestlingand singing as some catharticcarnival(which it is not), only that within 'the play of tropes' (Fernandez,1986)sucha seriesof displacementsis effected,perhapsthroughsuch 'syllogisms of association'as Fernandez(pp. 102-29) notes for Asturiandeepsong.Manyotherreadings are of course sustained,althoughpartialcorroboration comes from Parkin(1980: 57), who notes that 'sex entailsmarriage'is one of the threeelementarypropositionsof joking. 43 See also Schwab (1955) for an insightfulif overmechanicaldiscussionof matrisegments and lineagesegmentationin the town of Oshogbo. 44 Thusin Old Iye, forexample,the samehistoricaltemplatecouldnotbe invoked,sincethe Olu of Iye was still in charge.We can only speculateaboutthe repressedhistoriesinvokedby Oroyeye,althoughI imaginethey involvedrivaldynasticclaims,as in the song whichwarned againstthe rotationof the Oli betweenlineages(andeven quarters). 45 Two of my earliesteffortsin this direction(Apter,1983a,b) analysedsouthernAfrican praisesanddispraisesas a formof politicalaction.In a pathbreaking study,Parkin(1980:47) identifies'politeness'and'abuse'as contrastivedimensionsof greetingswhicharedeployedto negotiatestatusrelations.In many ways these dimensionsmap on to authorityand power, praiseand dispraise,hierarchyand solidarity,avoidanceandjoking. In Parkin'sanalysis,the 'creativity'of abuserefersto its transformative potentialities.See Gal(1991) for a comparative formulationof the relationsbetween gender,speech, and power, advocating'studies [that] attend not only to words but to the interactionalpracticesand the broaderpolitical and economiccontextof communicationin orderto understandthe processby which women's voices-in bothsenses-are routinelysuppressedor manageto emerge'(p. 178). It is my hope thatthis examinationof Oroyeyesongs representsa step in thatdirectionby emphasisingthe transformative powerof women's ritualspeech. 46 In this broaderconnection,Yai (n.d.) arguesfor an emancipatory focus on the Yoruba goddessNana as a paradigmfor theorisingand analysingfemale literarygenresand voices. The studyof Oroyeyemay well fall withinthe scope of Yai's project. REFERENCES Abraham, R. C. 1962. Dictionary of Modern Yoruba. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Apter, A. 1983a. 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'Betwixt and between: the liminal period in rites de passage', in The Forest of Symbols: aspects of Ndembu ritual, pp. 93-112. Ithaca, N.Y.. and London: Cornell University Press. Van den Berghe, P. 1963. 'Institutionalized licence and normative stability', Cahiers d'etudes africaines 3, 413-23. Yai, O. 1989. 'Issues in oral poetry: criticism, teaching and translation', in K. Barber and P. F. de Moraes Farias (eds), Discourse and its Disguises: the interpretation of African oral texts, pp. 59-69. African Studies Series 1, Birmingham: University of Birmingham. -n.d. 'Nana versus Ogun: affirming the female voice in Yoruba oral literature'. Unpublished MS. ABSTRACT If ritual songs of obscenity and abuse have become a familiar topic in Africanist ethnography since Evans-Pritchard'sfirst discussion of their 'canalising' functions in THE SANCTITYOF ABUSE 97 1929, few studies have paid sufficient attention to the socio-political and discursive contexts of the song texts themselves. The present article moves in that direction by relocating abusive songs of the Oroyeye festival in an Ekiti Yoruba town within the local forms of history and knowledge that motivate their interpretation and performative power. After reviewing the cult's historical interventions in local political affairs, the article examines the repressed historical memory of a displaced ruling dynasty and its associated line of civil chiefs as invoked by the song texts in two festival contexts. In the first-the Ajakadi wrestling match-which occurs at night, male age mates from different 'sides' of the town fight to stand their ground and topple their opponents while young women praise the winners and abuse the losers with sexual obscenities. In the second festival context, during the day, the elder 'grandmothers' of Oroyeye target malefactors and scoundrels by highlighting their misdeeds against a discursive background of homage and praise. In this fashion the female custodians of a displaced ruling line bring repressed sexual and political sub-texts to bear on male power competition, lineage fission, and antisocial behaviour. More generally, they mobilise the fertility and witchcraft of all Yoruba women to disclose hidden crimes and speak out with impunity. RESUME Si les chants rituels d'obscenites et d'insultes sont devenus un sujet populaire dans le domaine de l'ethnographie africaniste depuis le premier debat de Evans-Pritchardsur leur role de "canalisateurs" en 1929, peu d'etudes se sont suffisamment penchees sur les contextes sociopolitiques et discursifs des textes de ces chants. Cet article va dans ce sens en replacant les chants injurieux du festival d'Oroyeye, ville Ekiti Yoruba, dans les formes locales d'histoire et de connaissance qui motivent leur interpretation et leur pouvoir performatif. Apres avoir passe en revue les interventions historiques de ce culte dans les affaires politiques locales, l'article examine la memoire historique reprimee d'une dynastie dirigeante destitu6e et sa lign6e de chefs civils, comme l'evoquent les textes de chants dans deux contextes du festival. Dans le premier, a savoir le match de lutte nocturne Ajakadi, les hommes jeunes de la meme classe d'age et originaires de differents quartiers de la ville se battent pour faire tomber leur adversaire et rester debout pendant que de jeunes femmes font l'eloge des vainqueurs et insultent les perdants a grand renfort d'obscenites sexuelles. Dans le second contexte du festival, pendant la journee, les "grand-m6res" d'Oroyeye prennent pour cible les malfaiteurs et les gredins en mettant en lumiere leurs mefaits sur fond discursif d'hommage et d'eloge. De cette facon, les gardiennes d'une lignee dirigeante destituee infligent des sous-textes politiques et sexuels reprimes sur la lutte pour le pouvoir que se livrent les hommes, la fission de la lignee et le comportement antisocial. De mani6re plus generale, elles mobilisent la fertilite et la sorcellerie de toutes les femmes Yoruba pour devoiler des crimes caches et s'exprimer franchement en toute impunite.

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Discourse and Its Disclosures: Yoruba Women and the Sanctity of Abuse

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