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 reigned Oba Araisha. His mother had given birth to twins, but the servants of the palace hid one of them, killed him and buried him in the forest. As a teenager, Oba Araisha fell ill; Orunmila saw this sign and asked about that twin brother nobody had held funerals for. As a grown man, he could not finish anything he started, and Ifá told him: "You must look after someone who has died without funerals". His mother then told him the truth; he went to the forest, sacrificed two young roosters over his twin's grave and began to gather property. When women turned him down, he sacrificed again and got a wife and children; when he went for the throne without being the favorite, he sacrificed once more and they crowned him Obá.

Once he had the crown he fell in love with a very beautiful woman and neglected his brother's spirit, who appeared to him in dreams without him paying any attention. The dead twin turned into a giant rat, dug a tunnel from his grave to the food store and ate it all. The woman screamed; the king ordered them to dig to kill the rat, and they dug until they hit the twin's grave, and they went on past the forest: the animals fled, where the sun did not shine 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 child, but the twin did not want that, he wanted the king, his brother. And Oba Araisha died. To the twin of a dead person: always look after him.

Orunmila lived with a woman in a little house on the hill. It was his turn to go out and do an ebbó and, when he looked at himself, this sign came out; that is why he asked his woman not to set foot in the street while he was away, so she would not get into trouble.

Orunmila went out to his work and she disobeyed him. While he was doing the ebbó, a dove came near him, landed on his board and cooed at him; there he understood that his woman had betrayed him, and he told the dove: "To Iban Eshu: 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 their feet are not tied, but their wings.