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Adeboye Baba/9/a 7 A Portrait of 6gun as Reflected in lj616 Chants , jald are Yoruba poetic chants used in entertaining and saluting Ogun, As those who are familiar with the Ogun tradition very well know, the oriki Ogun (verbal salutes to Ogiin) within ijdld reveal, little by little, the nature of the deity. One of the most striking revelations of the ijdld is the contradictions found in them. This paper addresses these contradictions and argues that Ogunsymbolizes a universal contradiction: humans are strong and, at the same time, they are frail. The constant oppositions in the texts of tjald artists are therefore a necessary and explainable part of this poetic tradition. The contradictions, and in some cases the variations, found in Ogtin traditions as they are rendered by ijdld chanters are of three kinds. First, the figure of Ogun displays opposing personality traits (e.g., he is fiery and cool) or symbolic traits (e.g., he represents death and healing). Second, the literary construction of the chants opposes metaphors and images thereby reinforcing , through structure, contradictions that occur in content and meaning. Third, the devotees of Ogun place him in a bewildering variety of contradictory mythical traditions. Ogun founds many towns, conquers many people, and pursues several occupations. The wide variation in traditions raises questions as to the authenticity or correctness of any of them. But this problem is resolved in the ijdld verbal salutes to Ogun, As one ijdld artist declares: "Ogun meje l'Ogun-un mi" (The Ogun that I know are seven in number). Thus, many forms are attributed to the god Ogun, But what is important is the total picture that the many contradictions and variations eventually create . It is the sum of the parts that provides insight into what Ogun actually represents to the Yoruba. 148 Adeboye Babal((la liala-chantingl is a tradition found primarily among the QY9 Yoruba, though pockets of tjdld artists exist among the hunters in some of the communities adjacent to the QYQ-Yoruba. One of the Yoruba legends accounting for the origin of liala well illustrates the contradictions found in this tradition. In the book The Content and Form of Yoruba lidia, I reproduce in English four legends that claim liala-chanting was originated by Ogun during his lifetime (Babalola 1966:4-7). There is no need to repeat them here. Instead, I have a recently collected legend on the same theme, a legend that attributes the origin of ijdld not to Ogun but to Erinle, a hunter deity who also has a place in the Yoruba pantheon.' This variation seems remarkable in that the informant is a well-known devotee of Ogun,' yet he gives to another god the credit for originating liala-chanting, which is traditionally referred to as are Ogun (Ogun's entertainment). To Ogun he ascribes only the popularizing of lidld-chanting. The legend, told with some commentary, runs thus in English translation: Erinle' was the very originator of lidld-chanting. He was a hunter who used to go on frequent hunting expeditions from his hometown, Ajagbusl, to the forests within a day's journey on foot. As he had no wife he decided one day to make his abode in the forest. So he built a hut with stakes for walls and leaf-thatch for roof under a mighty gbingbin' tree near the bank of a river. The monkeys in the forest were his favorite game and he used to sell their carcasses, fresh or roasted, in Ajagbusi on market days. To amuse himself during his lonely sojourn in the forest he began to chant utterances in Yoruba in a peculiar style featuring a nasal twang. Whenever he was in the market he also used to invite prospective buyers of his bush meat, with sentences chanted likewise. Thus he drew special attention to himself, until one day some stalwart medicine men followed him from the market to his forest abode to ascertain where he came from. Erinle welcomed his guests with utterances in his peculiar chanting style and bade them wait for him in his hut while he went into the forest to get some fresh bush meat for them to take home. He made good his promise before the visitors departed. This was how Erinle's fame quickly spread in Ajagbusi town. The people regarded him as an uncanny man who had befriended the spirits living in the forest. Soon, some men decided to make farms near Erinle's hut. They...

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