Iroso Batrupon

A mother was troubled because her son was going to govern a strange land, and sensing that something might happen to him because of how great the post was, she went to see Orunmila. This Ifá came out: her son was surrounded by enemies who meant to destroy him, and ebbó had to be made. The mother, worried, made it at once. When she told her son, he said she should not be afraid: on the journey he would be traveling with his best friends, chosen by himself.

As the party passed a cave, it fell to Iroso Batrupon to go in first — and the false friends, who envied him and bore him ill will over the position they wanted for themselves, blocked the entrance with a great stone they had ready. They did not kill him: they believed that shut in there he would starve. Not long afterward, the sea rose so violently that a tidal wave formed; the water flooded the cave and its force shifted the stone, and through that gap Iroso Batrupon got out — thanks to Orunmila, for his mother's ebbó, and to Yemayá, for having helped with her waters.

Ojika Awó was the priest of Ifá of the land of Malee, and his sign was Iroso Batuto. Oshún Ibú Lare, who lived in the reaches of the sky, was in love with him and did not know how to win him, so she decided to draw him out: she undressed, covered her body in honey, and while the Awó was holding a ceremony at the river, she came down unclothed and shining with gold and held him; and he had no choice but to be with her.

When they had finished, he told her: «You do not know how to make love and you have left me unsatisfied». Offended, she laid a curse on him: «In your whole life you will find nothing but women of the streets». The curse stayed on him: he had no steady footing with any woman, and none lasted more than six months. Worn out, he went to see Orunmila, his father, who told him he had to make it up to Oshún to gain her pardon. Iroso Batuto begged her pardon and offered her the yellow hens, the honey and the calabash, and with that the inshé for steadiness was made for him: a word said after pleasure wounds too — and a scorned woman's wound lasts years.

In the land of Oguala Yebela, Shangó and Yemayá ruled. When Odara Ni Awó was born, his mother bled to death through the intestine; his father, on hearing it, dropped dead on the spot. Elegba placed the child in the arms of Yemayá and Shangó, and Olofin told them: «This boy has great luck and will be a great Babalawo, but he will be ungrateful and disobedient». They raised him, and at seven years old Yemayá pressed so hard that Orunmila made him Ifá — on one condition: «So you do not come to ruin, you may never visit me; I will come and see you».

Every morning and every night, Odara Ni Awó asked Yemayá and Shangó for their blessing, and every blessing brought a new secret. Elegba gave him none; he laughed and said: «This one is a child of Iroso Tuto, nothing more». They handed him the rule of the town, and his name grew — thanks to them. But Elegba got him up early to walk about, found him a wife from the land of the Egun, and the Awó, between the people waiting for him and the wife keeping him occupied, stopped asking for the blessing. Yemayá and Shangó, shamed, went to Orunmila: «Leave him be», he said. But Yemayá, in her pride, came out of the sea, knelt, called the Egun of the father and of the mother, and a wind rose; she turned into a whirlwind and the sea covered that whole land, with Odara Ni Awó inside it. By the time Shangó and Elegba tried to speak to her, it was too late. Whoever forgets who made them great loses the ground they were standing on.