Obara Meyi

Obara Meyi was born to a father who had only his left hand and a mother who was blind in one eye; from the womb he showed them dangers in dreams. He grew into a bright, talkative boy who stole the attention at the elders' meetings. Every seventeen days the priests met at the palace of the king of Ifé and, after the game of Ayó, one of the king's sons usually died. At one meeting, Obara drank too much and boasted that he would reveal the names of those responsible — or be put to death.

The plotters planned to kill him with a pit of iron hooks under the seat they would save for him. But his mother, advised by Ifá, took pounded yam and soup to the river bank and started bathing. One by one three travellers came by — Okpolo the frog, Obuko the goat and Agbo the ram —, ate her food and, not knowing who she was, confessed the whole plot to her: the trap, the impostor who would take the throne, and the way to be saved.

Obara came to the meeting with his dog, threw pieces of bread under the marked seat and the dog fell into the pit, uncovering the trap. He ordered the impostor down from the throne and his rightful father seated on it, and he ordered the goat sacrificed to Eshú, the ram to the ancestors and the frog to the earth: they were guilty of the deaths. The people carried him on their shoulders. That is why they say it was his mother who saved him from the cold hands of death.

The king of Death, furious because an Awó had brought prosperity to the earth, pretended to be gravely ill — his wife is Arun, sickness — and challenged the priests of heaven to cure him in seven days, chaining up the ones who failed. He served them «kolá drink» that was really eggs, and watered-down wine, to test their sight.

Obara Meyi sacrificed a goat to Eshú and another to his guardian angel, and put a ladder next to both. When he came before Death, he guessed how many people were in the room, called on the kolá and the wine to show what they really were, and shared all his food with a boy covered in sores who appeared at the door — Eshú in disguise. At night the boy climbed the ladder from the sacrifice up to Death's room, where he slept without his sick-man's robe, and together they took the vessel with that robe and threw it in the river.

At dawn on the appointed day, Death could not find his sick-man's clothes and had to come out looking bright and healthy: Obara's treatment «had worked». Obara shouted, and Eshú made the sound so loud that it shook the foundations of heaven, and Death paid up: between a bronze box full of rubbish and a barrel of kolá nuts, the boy told him to choose the kolá — which held half of everything Death owned. That is why, when death knocks at the door, people make the sacrifice Obara made.

At a party in the palace, Obara Meyi drank and announced that he could do the rogation on Olófin's head — something no priest could manage — and that he could wash black cloth until it turned white. The king gave him seven days or he would be put to death. His mother, upset, went to look for the only two who knew how: Okete, the one who served Olófin's head, and Aro, the one who turned black into white.

On the seventh day the king handed him ten yards of black cloth. At the river, while the witnesses watched, his mother sang calling on Aro: the fish came near, swallowed the cloth and brought it back up white as snow. Everyone in the palace was amazed at the miracle.

The rogation on Olófin's head was still to come. The year before, Okete had not made his sacrifice to Eshú and the ceremony had failed: the cloth did not turn white, no rain fell, crops and children died. Obara's mother gave a goat to Eshú and had Okete teach her son the incantation. When the moment came, Obara did the rogation on the king's head with the white cloth from the river and, with the invisible help of Eshú, as he touched it the cloth turned black again: a sign that the bad luck was over. The following year was prosperous for the king and the country, and Obara was very well rewarded.