AN ANALYSIS OF ORATURE AND SYMBOLIC ELEMENTS OF SELECTED CHILDREN'S DEITIES AMONG YEWA-ÀWÓRÌ, ÈòGBÁ AND ÌJÈòBÚ IN ÒGÙN STATE

Abstract

Several researches have been carried out by the previous researchers on Yorùbá deities, but very few of them focused on the deities specified for children in the Yorùbá traditional religion. This research shows the functional aspects of the Yorùbá children deities to the Yorùbá people in order to fill the vacuum created by the previous scholars. Three children deities known as Kórìkóto, Aláráagbó, and Eògbéò Òògbààgbà were selected from Yewa-Àwórì, Èògbá and Ìjèòbú in Ògùn State based on the prominence of the selected children's deities around the three areas. The study identified and characterized the forms and contents of the selected children's deities among Yewa-Àwórì, Èògbá and Ìjèòbú. The study analyzed the contents of the orature and the symbolic elements within the theoretical frameworks of Terry Eagleton's Semiotic Theory. All these were done with a view to explicating the contents and functions embedded in the selected children's deities. This study concluded that the symbolic elements, chanting and songs used in the worships of the selected children's deities among Yewa-Àwórì, Èògbá and Ìjèòbú revolved around the adherents' social lives, curing of bareness and other forms of diseases, teaching of moral values, inculcating humane qualities into the life of their children and transiting their children into the cult of adulthood. The study concluded that the symbolic elements such as statues, sacred stones, sets of wooden objects, white clothes, banana trees, sacred houses, children toys and other sacred antiquities found around the shrines serves different purposes and performs various functions in the lives of the devotees of the selected children's deities among Yewa-Àwórì, Èògbá and Ìjèbú.