Iroso Gan

There was a king who kept his people in hunger and poverty and spent his whole life among feasts and revels. Things grew so strained that he decided to be read at Orunmila's feet, and Orunmila saw this Ifá for him and told him a great war was coming that he could lose; to prevent it he had to make ebbó and lay on a very large meal for his whole town.

Just then Shangó arrived in the town, and Ogún handed him two Añá drums. Shangó went off to the square to play, with a red handkerchief tied at his neck and hanging over his face so no one would know him. The people of the town gathered to listen to him, and the king, seeing that nobody was coming to his meal, sent his men out to call them with trumpets — and still nobody came. When the king went to see for himself and came up to Shangó, Shangó uncovered his face and said that he was the king. And he explained before everyone that the king was not giving that meal because his people were going hungry and poor, but because a great war was coming that he knew he was going to lose. A king who loses his crown: the crown that is not earned by serving is lost to the sound of a trumpet.

In the land of Efon Alaye, when King Oba Araisha was born, his mother gave birth to twins, but the palace servants hid one, killed him and buried him in the forest. As a boy, Oba Araisha fell ill; Orunmila saw this sign and asked after the twin brother for whom no funeral rites had been done. As a grown man, unable to finish anything he began, Ifá told him: «You must see to someone who has died with no funeral rites». His mother told him the truth; he went to the forest, sacrificed two young roosters on his twin's grave, and began to gather property. When women turned him down, he sacrificed again and had a wife and children; when he stood for the throne without being the favorite, he sacrificed again and was crowned Obá.

Once crowned, he fell in love with a very beautiful woman and neglected his brother's spirit, who visited him in dreams without his taking notice. The dead twin became a giant rat, opened a tunnel from his grave to the food store and ate it all. The woman screamed; the king ordered them to dig and kill the rat, and they dug as far as the twin's grave, and beyond it into the forest: the animals fled, where the sun never shone it now burned all day, and where it never rained the water came down without stopping. Oba Araisha fell ill; he sacrificed rats, fish, a young girl and a boy, but the twin did not want any of that — he wanted the king, his brother. And Oba Araisha died. To the twin of someone who has died: attend him always.

Orunmila lived with a woman in a small house up on the hill. He had to go out, saw this sign for himself, and told his wife not to go out into the street so as not to get herself into trouble, because he had to go out to make an ebbó.

Orunmila went off to do his work, and the woman disobeyed him. While Orunmila was making the ebbó, a dove came, settled on the board and cooed at him; he understood that his wife had betrayed him, and he said to the dove: «To Iban Eshu: for as long as the world is the world, I will not eat you». That is why doves are respected in this sign, and for the ebbó they are not tied by the feet, but by the wings.