Note 309 — Chapter IV · MARKET DAYS

Ako-ojo, “First Day”; ojo-awo, “Day of the Secret,” sacred to Ifa; ojo-ogun, “Day of Ogun,” the god of iron; ojo-shango, “Day of Shango,” the god of thunder; ojo-obatala, “Obatala’s Day.” A holy day is called ose (se, to disallow), and because each holy day recurs weekly, ose has also come to mean the week of five days (Ellis, Yoruba-speaking Peoples, pp. 145 sq.). According to an earlier writer osse (ose), or holy day, comes from a word signifying silence. This expression was transferred to the Christian Sunday, with which the Yoruba became familiar after the year 1822, when many of them emigrated to Sierra Leone (Miss Sarah Tucker, Abbeokuta; or Sunrise within the Tropics,² London, 1853, p. 37 n.*). Whether the Yoruba week really consists of five days seems open to grave doubt. Bishop James Johnson, a native African, substantiates Ellis by giving the names of the five days (quoted in Dennett, At the Back of the Black Man’s Mind, p. 245), and also speaks of “every fifth day, which is the close of a week of oses, or worshipping days” (ibid., p. 251). But Mr. Dennett himself, in his latest work, cites three native informants in favour of a week of four days. Moreover, Shango’s (Jakuta’s) Day is described by Mr. Dennett as the Yoruba “Sunday.” The first day of the week is Ogun’s Day, the other weekdays following in the order given by Ellis. It is to be noted that Ogun’s Day, the first, fifth, ninth, and so on, is the regular market day. The god Ogun in some parts of Yorubaland has taken the place of another deity, Odudua, whom Mr. Dennett found to be universally regarded as the originator of the system of weekdays (Nigerian Studies, London, 1910, pp. 72-80). A five-day week has been noted among the Jebu of southeastern Yorubaland (D’Avezac, in Mémoires de la société ethnologique, 1845, ii, pt. ii, 81), and Burton refers to the same institution among the Egba, by whom the terminal day is called ose (R. F. Burton, Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains, London, 1863, i, 205).