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African Pantheon (Yoruba) tradition
Also known as: Moremi
Legendary queen of Ile-Ife in Yoruba oral tradition, celebrated for allowing herself to be captured by raiders to learn the secret of their terrifying disguise, then leading her people to victory. Still honored annually at Ile-Ife's Edi Festival.
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
In Yoruba oral tradition (itan), the city of Ile-Ife was repeatedly raided by a people usually called the Ugbo, who appeared to the Ife as fearsome spirits covered in dried grass and raffia fiber, terrifying the defenders into flight. Moremi, a queen of Ife, chose to let herself be captured during a raid so she could learn the raiders' secret from inside their camp, where she rose in status, in most versions marrying the Ugbo king.
Moremi discovered that the "spirits" were ordinary men disguised in raffia and grass costumes and escaped back to Ife with this knowledge. Armed with it, the Ife were able to defeat the next raid by setting the attackers' costumes alight with fire, ending the threat the Ugbo had posed for years.
Before her capture, Moremi had made a vow to the spirit of a local river, most often named as Esimirin, promising a great sacrifice if she returned safely and her plan succeeded. In the tradition's most widely told and most painful version, the price the river spirit demanded was her only son, Oluorogbo, whom she gave up to fulfill her vow. As with much orally transmitted history, different lineages and quarters of Ile-Ife preserve variant details of the story, including which river spirit was owed the debt and the exact nature of what Moremi sacrificed.
Moremi's story was first set down at length in Reverend Samuel Johnson's The History of the Yorubas, compiled from oral sources around 1897 and published posthumously in 1921, though the tradition itself long predates that written record. Ile-Ife still commemorates her sacrifice and the city's deliverance each year at the Edi Festival.
Yoruba oral tradition does not give a fixed death for Moremi beyond the sacrifice tied to her vow; she is remembered as an ancestral heroine of Ile-Ife and commemorated annually in the city's Edi Festival, which reenacts her sacrifice and Ife's deliverance from the Ugbo raids.
Historical texts and references
“Samuel Johnson's history records the tradition of Moremi's capture among the Ugbo, her discovery of their raffia disguise, and Ife's subsequent victory over the raiders by fire.”