Aridon
Aridon is the Urhobo divinity of memory and remembrance and the muse of poets, central to the Udje dance-song tradition of the Agbon and neighbouring Urhobo clans. A poet or singer pays tribute to Aridon at the very opening of a performance, for the god is held to supply both the inspiration to compose and the retentive memory to deliver long satirical songs faultlessly before a critical audience. In the ritual transfer of his power a medicine man pricks the seeker's tongue nine times, the final stroke sealed with the mystical invocation rhi rhi rhiri. The poet and scholar Tanure Ojaide, who transcribed and theorised the Udje corpus, regards his own art as a continuation of Aridon's gift to the Urhobo griots of old. Aridon is closely paired with Uhaghwa, the divinity of performance, the two sometimes treated as interchangeable aspects of a single poetic principle.
Parentage
- parent: Oghene
Domains
- memory remembrance
- poetic inspiration
Powers
- to grant the poet inspiration and a retentive memory
Epithets
- Aridon r'odeTanure Ojaide, Poetry, Performance, and Art: Udje Dance Songs of the Urhobo People (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2003). (secondary)
Relations
- subordinate to: OgheneAridon ranks among the lesser Urhobo divinities held to be the offspring and emissaries of the creator Oghene.Michael Y. Nabofa, in Onigu Otite (ed.), The Urhobo People (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1980). (secondary)
- ally: UhaghwaAridon and Uhaghwa are the paired patrons of Udje song-poetry, jointly invoked for inspiration, memory and thrilling performance and sometimes spoken of as a single principle of poetic power.Tanure Ojaide, Poetry, Performance, and Art: Udje Dance Songs of the Urhobo People (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2003). (secondary)
Sources
- Aridon is the Urhobo god of memory and remembrance and the muse of the Udje song-poets, invoked for inspiration and retentive recall.: Tanure Ojaide, Poetry, Performance, and Art: Udje Dance Songs of the Urhobo People (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2003). (secondary); Sunny Awhefeada, 'The place of Urhobo folklore in Tanure Ojaide's poetry', Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 52, no. 2 (2015). (secondary)