ASO ILEKE ORISHA OKO

This is a sheath for the iron staff which is the main emblem for the cult of Orisha oko. In Oyo Peter Morton Williams was told that it is called aso ileke (clothing of beads), although William Fagg was told elsewhere that it was called ewu (his garment). It is a costly production emphasising that the orisha is claimed both to bestow wealth and to demand lavish expenditure. Orisha oko "god of the farm" is one of the deities of the Oyo Yoruba territories and where its cult has been reported beyond them, it is known to have been carried by migrant Oyo people. Informants have been told of the orisha's association with or capacity to detect witchcraft, bees (his messengers), sexual licence at festivals, safeguarding crops from disease and curing farmers of malaria, as well as hunting and the cultivation of fields. Fagg concluded that the concern was not so much with agriculture but curing aches in the heads and stomachs of women. In Oyo two festivals a year were held under the supervision of the Laguna, high chiefs of the Oyo Mesi, when the prime role of the orisha was to safeguard the production of food by both farming and hunting. The origins and extensive information on the cult are translated into French from Peter Morton William's essay for arts du nigeria (Fau, E., and Joubert, H., eds. Paris, 1997, pp.69-73), where a priestess is shown seated beside a similarly-beaded sheath to the present one. Fagg (W., Yoruba Beadwork, New York, 1980) illustrates three others.