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'Bade Aiuwor. 8 6gun's lremoje: A Philosophy of Living and Dying ral traditions maintain that the god Ogun led four hundred and one Yoruba divinities when they descended to earth at Ife-Oodaye, the exact location of which we are, today, not sure. These traditions also state that Ogun helped the divinities to survive in their initial settlement on earth and to effect harmony among themselves as they struggled with new and unforeseen circumstances. Ogun's ability to direct the various activities of the other divinities emanated from his philosophy that one must display courage and heroism in living and in dying while serving one's fellow men. For Ogun, the only means of achieving honor in life was to live up to this philosophy. The leadership ideals associated with Ogun have been preserved in ritual and oral traditions associated with hunting and warfare, both of which Ogun enjoined his followers to know and to perform. Today, one of the best sources for examining them, and the one on which this essay concentrates, is Iremoje, a corpus of poetic chants sung at funeral ceremonies, also known as iremQje,l held for deceased hunters. Of the various traditional rites of passage for the dead which are still observed in West Africa, ceremonies attached to the Yoruba hunter's guild appear to be among the more widespread. Other death rites are performed by religious groups such as those devoted to Sango (the god of lightning and thunder) or Ifa (the divination oracle) of Nigeria; by the Elegbara worshippers of the People's Republic of Benin; or by occupational guilds, including the Yoruba and Rausa calabash carvers of Nigeria or the Ewe cloth weavers of Ghana. The funerals for deceased members of each of these groups are 174 'Bade Ajuwc;>n the sole concern of members. By contrast, the death rites for Yoruba hunters are a full community affair. Nearly everyone in a traditional Yoruba community is in one way or another connected to Ogun and likes to have a hand in a ceremony which honors the deity who gave to the world its first divine model-performance for a leader. The communities from which the data in this study come are QY9, former capital of the Yoruba-speaking peoples' largest precolonial empire, and towns surrounding it. At its peak, c. 1780, the QY9 Empire stretched from the Niger River in the north to the sea in the south and from Dahomey in the west to the Benin border in the east. It is thought that hunters' guilds were spread throughout this area, and that they welcomed and protected fellow hunters in their travels. That being the case, the traditions associated with the guilds were no doubt widely circulated and understood. In fact, knowing the traditions was possibly a "password" for gaining acceptance in a strange place. Today, the geographical core of the old empire is preserved as QY9 state, one of twenty-one states in Nigeria. It embraces one of at least a dozen Yorubaspeaking subgroups, each of which has its own dialect and historical traditions . Part of the reason that we may speak of them collectively as Yoruba is that some common traditions were disseminated across subgroup boundaries by such travelers as the hunters. The iremqje Tradition Oral traditions concerning the origin of hunters' death rites state that when Ogun was on earth he taught men the art of hunting and warfare. He organized and trained hunters in occupational guilds and then established rules and regulations to guide them in all facets of their professional, religious , and social activities. For the entertainment of himself and his followers , he also established two sets of poetic chants, one called ljala, to be performed on various occasions, particularly Ogun festivals,' and the other lremoj«. During the latter part of Ogun's life on earth he was greatly concerned that the hunting profession and its traditions be preserved after his departure. He feared the loss of his cherished hunting charms, and, more importantly, the iremQje chants, which preserved the philosophy which was central to him and to his way of life. Consequently, Ogun consulted the Ifa oracle, who counseled him to order the hunters to perform the iremQje at the final funeral rites for their departed colleagues. It was Ifa, it might be noted, who christened the chants as lremoje, the etymology of which is unclear, Thus Ogun directed guild members to perform the chants henceforth, warning them that this final observance was to...

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