Egbere

The crying starts somewhere past the last farm, out where the bush closes over the footpath and the dark turns solid. It is the sound of a small child left alone, thin and steady, rising and falling with no one coming to hush it. A traveler who follows that sound, telling himself no child could be out this far at this hour, finds no child. He finds a short, hunched figure under the trees, a rolled mat pressed against its body, weeping as though its heart has cracked open. The tears are not for him, and they may not be tears at all.

This is the Egbere, a creature of the Yoruba night woods, and almost everything about it is small except the trouble it brings. It stands no higher than a child. Oxford’s dictionary of the Yoruba language reaches for the nearest English words and lands on fairy and goblin, which catches the size and the menace but misses the wet, miserable sound that announces it. The weeping is the whole signature. Egbere does not roar or stalk. It sits in the leaf litter and sobs, and the forest carries that sob a long way in the cold air after dark.

What it cradles while it cries is the point of the whole legend. Egbere is never without a small mat, a worn thing of woven reed or grass, rolled and held tight under one arm. The mat is treasure. The belief, repeated across the southwest, is plain and dangerous: anyone who can take that mat from the Egbere will come into wealth beyond reckoning. Riches, in a single grab, from a sobbing creature half your height. People have gone into the bush at night for less.

Nobody quite agrees on what the thing actually is. Some hold that Egbere is a true spirit of the wild places, one of the small uncanny residents of the forest that the Yoruba have always known to keep their distance from. Others say it is something sadder, the restless soul of a person who died without proper burial, denied the rites that would have settled it, left to wander and weep in the dark because it has nowhere else to be. The two ideas sit side by side and never resolve. There is also a thread that runs back to something perfectly real. The forests of the region are home to the galago, the nocturnal primate that Nigerians call the bush baby, whose call in the black canopy is a high, infant-like wail. Anyone who has heard it knows how easily that sound becomes a small weeping figure in the mind, somewhere out beyond the firelight.

One early colonial account, set down by a missionary at the close of the nineteenth century, gives the Egbere a grimmer habit. In that telling it lives in graves, comes out at midnight, and goes back at dawn, keeping the same hours as a vampire. It takes a peculiar delight in riding sheep through the night and leaves sickness in the flock behind it. The account is written with the condescension of its time, but the shape of the belief is consistent: a thing of the grave and the dark that thins out and vanishes when the sun comes up. Daylight is not its element.

Then there is the moment the legend is really built around. A bold or desperate person, finding the Egbere alone and weeping, wrests the mat from under its arm and runs. The riches are said to be real and to stay; the gold does not turn to leaves at dawn. But the stories that have come down attach a price to it. Some speak of a stretch of torment that follows the theft, a span often counted at six days, in which the new owner is wracked before the wealth settles. Others say the true cost is silence, that the one who took the mat must lie about where the money came from for the rest of his life and never name the sobbing creature he robbed. The forest does not give anything away clean.

Egbere is malevolent, and weak, and these are the same fact seen from two sides. Its power is the mat and the wealth bound up in it, plus the unease it spreads through the dark, the disease it carries, the way it can draw a grown person off a safe path with nothing but the sound of crying. Its limits are just as clear. It is small enough to be overpowered by someone with the nerve to try. It belongs to the night and the grave and loses its hold when morning comes. And the treasure it offers is a trap dressed as a gift, so that even winning against an Egbere is a kind of losing. That is the lesson the Yoruba bush keeps teaching through it: the easy fortune found weeping in the dark is the most expensive kind there is.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Egbere in Yoruba mythology?

The Egbere is a malevolent nocturnal forest spirit in Yoruba folklore, often described as a small, gnome-like or goblin-like being that lives in the woods and is active only at night. It is best known for two things: it weeps constantly, and it carries a small mat believed to grant great wealth to anyone who can take it.

Why does the Egbere cry?

The Egbere is said to weep ceaselessly, with a thin, child-like wailing that carries through the forest after dark, though Yoruba folklore treats the sincerity of its tears as doubtful. Some traditions link the crying to the galago, or bush baby, a nocturnal primate whose infant-like call in the night likely helped shape the legend. Others say the Egbere is the restless soul of someone who died without proper burial.

What is the Egbere’s mat and what does it do?

The Egbere always clutches a small, tattered reed mat, and Yoruba belief holds that anyone who can wrest this mat from the creature will gain unimaginable riches. The wealth is said to be real and lasting, but the legend attaches a heavy price to it, such as a period of torment or a lifelong obligation to hide where the fortune came from. The mat functions as a warning against greed.

Is the Egbere dangerous to humans?

Yes. The Egbere is regarded as a malevolent being that haunts the night woods and, in one early account, old graves, emerging at midnight and vanishing by dawn. It is associated with sickness and with luring people off safe paths, and even its gift of wealth comes bound to suffering, making it a cautionary figure rather than a helpful one.

How can someone deal with an Egbere?

The Egbere is small and can in principle be overpowered by anyone bold enough to seize its mat, but folklore frames doing so as a dangerous bargain rather than a clean victory. Because the creature belongs to the night and weakens at daybreak, traditional wisdom simply warns people to stay out of the deep forest after dark and to be wary of the sound of crying.

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