Gods and Heroes: Itan—Legends of the Golden Age Book One

Copyright © 2018 by Oladele Olusanya.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 05/13/2020

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CONTENTS

Prologue

The Storyteller

Chapter 1  The Heroine of Ife

Chapter 2  The Great Migration

Chapter 3  When Gods Walked the Earth

Chapter 4  The Legacy of Obanta

Chapter 5  The Treasures of Olokun

Chapter 6  The Sacred River

Chapter 7  Atapame

Chapter 8  An Empire Falters

Chapter 9  The Last of the Hero-Kings

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

For my wife Kim and our son Ayodeji Kehinde Olusanya

(2012–2016), whose memory inspires us both.

PROLOGUE

Enyin omo Yoruba

Mo ki yin, mo kago

Lokunrin, lobirin

Mo ki yin. mo kago

Onile, alejo

Agba at’omode

Mo ki yin, mo kago o.

Children of Yoruba,

I greet you

And make obeisance.

Men and women,

I greet you. I pay homage.

Those at home

And strangers on a visit,

Young and old,

I greet you, and I make obeisance.

— Traditional Yoruba song of greeting

The Storyteller

O UR STORY BEGINS with the origin of the Yoruba people, in an extremely old time when there were no eyewitnesses but the gods. The ancient Yorubas had no written documents. There were no records etched in stone, carved on ancient monuments, or inscribed on rolls of papyrus. All we have to tell their story is their oral tradition retold through the years by storytellers like the Old Woman. We must therefore recount the history of the Yoruba people through their myths, legends, and oral traditions. It is a story of sacred visions, epic journeys, and heroic sacrifices where the acts of ordinary men and women intertwined with the actions of deities from the far beginning of time.

And what were these beginnings? Yoruba oral tradition, backed by linguistic studies and modern archeological excavations, point to the origin of the Yoruba people in present-day Western Nigeria to an epic migration from a faraway land to the east and north—the land of Nubia—sandwiched in ancient days between Egypt and Sudan. The leader of this migration was a soldier and adventurer named Oduduwa. This is the story of the children of Oduduwa.

It is also the story of my family. My family is Yoruba. We are also Ijebus and Remos. It is a lineage that came even before the time of Olu-iwa, the fabled first Awujale of Ijebu. We are as old as the red soil of Ikenne, Odogbolu, and Ijebu-Ode, those towns in Ijebuland that are the scenes of many chapters of our story. It is on this land that the ancestors of the Odusanya and Olusanya families lived for generations. Our family is as ancient as the dark green forest that surrounds our Ijebu villages. It is as old as the muddy rivers of Majidun, Yemoji, and Uren. We were here when the rain forest was filled with elephants and leopards and the rivers swarmed with crocodiles and hippopotami, which were simultaneously hunted for food and worshipped as symbols of the majestic gods.

Initially a people of the savanna, we later came south to live in the forest with its mighty trees and deep rivers. Our ancestors learned to coexist with the spirits of the forest, the iwins and anjonu, who, though powerful and sometimes malevolent, could be manipulated with the help of the gods. Although we have always lived in the forest, the sea was always nearby, a murmur to be heard on a still day beyond that coastal bar that separated it from the placid lagoons and creeks of the Ijebu waterside. The ancient Ijebus regarded the ocean as the sacred abode of Olokun. They never ventured on the high seas.

To the north lay the grassland that stretched a great distance to the mighty river dedicated to the goddess Oya. It was in these grasslands that the great battles of the dynastic empires of Ile-Ife and Oyo were fought, and it is from there that our ancestors ventured south to settle in Ijebuland. Since then, generations of our family have been nourished by the Ijebu soil from which plantains, yams, and cassava grow. These crops are made into ebiripo, ikokore, gari, and igbekere to nourish us, enriched with epo pupa, the red oil of our native palm. For what is an Ijebu man without his eba, ewedu, and ikokore?

But why this book? the reader might ask. After all, we can know about our myths and fables from many different sources. My answer is this: Why can’t we, modern Yorubas, have an epic of our own in our own time, like Homer’s Iliad or Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, that will present our rich mythology and history to the world and stir the interest and pride of our children and grandchildren?

This book is a response to a call from the past, invoked within me, asking for a retelling of the story of our ancestors. For why should we forget our origin and the golden age of our ancestors just because we live in a modern age? In an age in which our old customs and modes of worship are forgotten and disparaged, the stories in these pages pay homage to a culture that should not be forgotten. We need to know and value our past for us to have meaning in our lives.

And instead of the recitation of a boring list of historical events and dates, why not tell the story with a liberal injection of imagination mixed with traditional myths and legends alongside actual history so that the reader is both entertained and educated? No major milestone in the story of the Yoruba people is to be left out in this undertaking, from the ancient stories of Oranmiyan, Moremi, Sango, Oya, and Osun to Aole’s curse, the fall of Oyo, the era of the warlords of the nineteenth century and the advent of British colonization of Yorubaland.

Since I am well past my sixtieth year on this earth, this is an old man’s tale. But it is one that I hope would throb with the vigor and excitement of youth—everyone’s youth and the youth of the heroic era of our people. These are legends of the golden age, an era which the romanticists hope will return and never pass away. And although this book was written in the space of little more than a year, the work had been a long time in the making, since the passing of the Old Woman more than a hundred years ago.

*     *     *     *     *

Even when she was young, the Old Woman knew she was different. She had a keen understanding and knowledge of the past. When she slept, she dreamt of people she had never met. They were from her own past and the collective past of her people. She heard voices telling her of things that had happened a long time before she was born. And even when she was awake and had her eyes open, she saw visions of events that had happened in another era, in another place. And she did not just see these visions as in a dream—vague, gray, or blurred at the edges. What she saw was vivid, sharp, and clear. Her visions were in full color. Every detail was etched out, like the view of a hillside after rain, when the clouds had cleared and the sun shone clear and bright.

The voices she heard were real. The dialects and accents of the characters, which the Old Woman faithfully recorded, told clearly of the towns and places of their birth and origin. She understood them all, even when she had never heard that way of speaking before.

She was a visionary of the past though not strictly an historian. Once, her parents were surprised when she told them clearly of an event that had happened in her family when she was only eighteen months old. Once, her father lost his machete when he went to the field. She was not there when this happened, but she had gone out and retrieved it from behind a rock, where he had forgotten it.

And when she recounted the stories of her people, hers was a mythology with a quirky but welcome realism. It was different from the stodgy and predictable folk tales the people were used to. She provided descriptions and details that other storytellers left out or did not know. In the stories told by the Old Woman, men walked, talked, and acted like actual persons. They were not the infallible heroes of Yoruba myth and legend. They betrayed those who loved them. They schemed for power and position. The women were real, with the foibles and idiosyncrasies of their sex. They plotted against their rivals, and they succumbed to the charms of men who seduced them.

Thus, the Old Woman became one of the griots of our people. She was conscious of her role as a storyteller in her community. But like everything that ever lived, she too passed away. So the torch was passed, first to my grandmother, then to my mother. And now it is I who must tell these old stories much as the Old Woman would. I will therefore take my cue from the methods of the Old Woman, taking over where she has left off. I will repeat all the details of each story as I remember them. And when I recount in Yoruba the speech of the protagonists, I will use the classic Yoruba of Oyo and Ibadan, not the Ijebu dialect, even if the characters came from Remo or Ijebu-Ode. This is because this is how the Old Woman spoke, for she was a daughter of old Ife and Ibadan.

I will tell this great story of the Yoruba people exactly as it would have been told in the old days. This is the real history of our people, although they may come out as fanciful tales of myth and imagination. They come from the words and recollections of eyewitnesses from ancient times. People like the Old Woman, these arokens and storytellers of our people who came from Ile-Ife, Oyo, Bini, Ijebu-Ode, and Ikenne.

Following their precepts as I retell these ancient stories of our heroes, I will regale you, my reader and listener, with not just the triumphs and heroism of these men and women but their failures and mishaps. For these heroes and heroines were human like us, even if sometimes, they became gods after they left the earth. In these stories, the men are brave and cunning. They fight for their land, their dignity, and the future of their race. The women are attractive, independent, and fully developed. Sometimes they are deadly and unpredictable, like the real women whom we know in our own modern lives.

But these tales of the golden age of our people handed down by the Old Woman and the other arokens do not always form a complete story. Where there are gaps, I have filled these in with a judicious amount of my own invention. This is a device that the Old Woman herself recognized as being within the rights and prerogatives of the storyteller. And I must start from the beginning, with the first story the Old Woman told as she sat on a stool surrounded by children who squatted in the moonlight in a tight circle around her feet.

*     *     *     *     *

The Old Woman told the children that the founder and progenitor of the Yoruba race was Oduduwa. She said that he became a god after leaving the earth. And as a god, he still looked after and protected his people, even in out-of-the-way Ikenne. In the ancient language of our people, his name came from Odu-ti-o-da-Iwa, the progenitor of behavior, and Odu-ti-o-du-Iwa, the source of our manners and good culture. Cultured and civilized behavior among men had always been treasured attributes among our people. According to the Old Woman, Oduduwa was a man chosen and destined by the gods. He brought our people over a vast distance too great to recall, across deserts, mountains, and rivers, to settle them at the place we now call Ile-Ife. This great migration was the beginning of the story of our people.

But the Old Woman went forward in time and began with the tale of the great heroine of Ile-Ife. Her story had to come first. For as the Old Woman told the children, without the heroism of Moremi, Ile-Ife would not have survived her early years. And there would be no Yoruba people living in the land today.

As the Old Woman began her story, the scene was lit by the bright full moon that enveloped the village of Ikenne. The air was cool as a steady breeze came from the direction of the river. The children had gathered in the open space outside the Old Woman’s hut. They greeted her as she came out of her hut. She looked at each in turn and responded with a few words of "Eweso and Eku role, eyen omo." Then she put her walking stick on the ground. Carefully, she bent her knees and sat on a stool that had been placed there for her by Efunyemi, the eldest of the children. After adjusting her position on the wooden stool, for her bones ached, the Old Woman lifted her head and looked at the children. She cleared her throat, and all the children leaned forward in anticipation. A murmur went through the gathering. They knew the Old Woman always started her stories the same way.

Looking around sharply to make sure everyone was paying attention, she said in a loud voice, her strong voice belying her age, "Alo o."

"Alo!" the children chimed back. Their young voices rose in unison.

"Ni igba kan."

"Igba kan nlo, igba kan nbo."

Once upon a time, an era passes away, and another time comes by.

CHAPTER 1

Iya Agba,

Sọ fun wa nipa aiye igba ren.

So itan baba wa Oduduwa,

Ati Oranmiyan, aremo alagbara.

Jẹ ki a kunlẹ ki a ji roro Moremi

Ti o lọ sinu aginju

Lati juba oriṣa odo Osirimi.

Tell, ancient one,

Of our father Oduduwa

And Oranmiyan, the mighty prince.

Let us kneel and feel

Moremi’s passion

As she went in triumph, then despair

Before the river goddess.

The Heroine of Ife

I N THE BEGINNING, the land of Ife was not populated by our people. Our people came here at a time destined from the beginning of time, led by the great progenitor Oduduwa. They conquered the land and assimilated its people. As years went by, their offspring spread over the land. Blessed by the gods, their language, customs, and culture flourished.

But not long after our people had settled in the new land of Ile-Ife, they grew complacent and careless. By this time, Oduduwa was long dead, and the new Ooni was not as brave, wise, or cunning. Oduduwa’s favored grandson, a youth named Oranmiyan, was gone from the land. For he was a restless young man with an itch in his limbs. He had a wandering disease that would not let him stay in one place. Like his grandfather and great-grandfather before him, the gods had given him a craving for wandering and adventure. Where danger lurked, there he longed to be, for he cared little for his own personal safety. He was athletic and well built, and he was acclaimed to be the foremost wrestler and fighter of his age. Tall like his grandfather, his noble bearing and majestic aspect was well marked in him even as a young man of just nineteen years of age. He commanded the respect of his companions and the admiration of the people of Ile-Ife, and this was not simply because of the privileged position of his birth. He won admiration and respect through his personal shrewdness, bravery, and selflessness.

But while the brave and favored Oranmiyan was away from Ile-Ife, the forest people, known as igbo to the people of Ife, grew restless. Before this, they had been docile and submissive, even though the people of Ife had displaced them from the land. But now they had a new leader, Ojuwere, who now led them in a bold stratagem to reclaim their land and heritage from the people of Ile-Ife. Ojuwere devised a plan whereby they would harass and eventually drive away the Ife people.

Under his shrewd leadership and direction, the igbo warriors, dressed in grass skirts and fearsome masks carved out of the strong and dark iroko wood that covered their faces, began to terrorize the people of Ife. They were more fearsome to look upon than the most terrible egungun of Ife. These apparitions came out of their rude habitations in the forest. They descended on the city of Ile-Ife. They looted the city of its riches while the inhabitants fled. They also ravaged the surrounding villages and farms, carrying away their rich produce and harvests.

The people of Ile-Ife thought these beings were spirits of the other world, not humans. They abandoned their dwellings and fled when these fearsome beings appeared. For who among these ancient and superstitious people would dare to stay and confront a spirit of the dead? The people of Ife considered themselves to be a brave people. They could confront and fight their enemies if they thought they were fellow humans. But they could not do battle with beings who were the spirits of departed ancestors. They thought these ancestral spirits were angry with them for a reason they could not discern.

This unhappy state of affairs continued for some time until an unlikely heroine came out from the midst of our people. This was a maiden married to a young chief close to the palace of the Ooni. She saw the plight of her people and resolved to find the means to remedy it.

We do not know what it was that ignited the flames of passion and heroism in this maiden. What was it that suppressed that native feminine timidity that avoided physical conflict and warfare and shrank in fear from the mysterious or the occult? But she may have listened to the stories of Lamurudu and Oduduwa, those heroes of her people who had made the epic journey from Nubia to the land of Ife. She herself was a princess of the house of Oduduwa. And she may have been inspired by the stories of her brave kinsman, Oranmiyan, who at that time was away from home, on an epic expedition to win fame and glory across many lands.

What we know is that this maiden was a young person who wanted to restore the glory of her land that was told in songs and fables. She could not bear that Ile-Ife, the land of heroes, had become the habitation of cowards. She would have none of it. She was determined to find a way to reclaim the pride and dignity of her people.

The name of this maiden was Moremi. Her husband, Olumuwa, was a young man—and only a junior chief at that—when he married her. Moremi loved her husband even if she had to share him with another woman, his first wife. For even in those early years of the history of Ile-Ife, the institution of polygamy, the practice of a man having many wives, was entrenched in the ways of our people. In those days of incessant warfare, young men constantly fell in battle. Few survived to old age. In addition, it was men, not women, who were employed in the dangerous occupations of farming, fishing, and hunting. Accidents, sometimes fatal, happened to the active male members of the clan all the time. Thus, there was an excess supply of young maidens of marriageable age compared to the number of men who could take them as wives.

Still, in those days, only very few men married multiple wives at any single time. Those who married many wives were those who could afford to. These were the nobility, the Ooni and his high chiefs, and those commoners who were favored by the gods and had become prosperous from trade, farming, or war.

Olumuwa was such a man. He was a jovial and lovable man. Though he was just in his late twenties, he was already a prominent person in the town. He had begun to take part in important councils of state. He was a successful farmer and leader, and he was respected even in the palace of the Ooni. Everyone knew he could afford more than one wife. In fact, his status demanded it.

On the night of his second marriage to Moremi, Olumuwa had whispered in the ears of his young bride, I am going to teach you some wonderful things tonight. You are going to like them. You will get pregnant and bear me many sons.

He squeezed her arm, and she knew exactly what he meant. For in a strange way that even she could not explain, though she was barely fifteen years old, Moremi had no terror for the marriage bed. Far from scaring her, his prurient words excited her. She felt a warm feeling spread from her loins to deep inside her. She giggled in anticipation.

And she would always remember that first night of pleasure when they were alone on her husband’s sleeping palette. It was the first time she had ever been with a man. She loved the touch of his warm body as it pressed against her and his movements within her that gave her first a sharp pain then waves of pleasure. He was skilled in the ways of a man with a maid. That night, she came to love him as few women loved their husbands in those days. It was a physical love mixed with a soft, tender, almost maternal emotion.

She also loved her new family and the comradeship in that small polygamous household. Her husband’s first wife was a friendly, practical maiden called Ifetilewa. But although there were only two wives, their household always seemed to be full of women. There were Ifetilewa’s two elder sisters who came to live with them when their husbands were killed in raids by the igbo marauders. Olumuwa had invited them to share the comfort of their home. Then there was Olumuwa’s aunt, an old spinster, who was his father’s sister. She was a widow and had no children.

Moremi treasured the laughter that the women shared as they pounded the roots of edible plants with a wooden pestle in a mortar in preparation to feeding guests who came to their house before an important festival. She learned to participate with pleasure in the gossip of the women and the different ways they made fun of her husband when he was not around. Ifetilewa had once declared that on the night of her marriage, she saw that her husband’s oko was so big, she never knew how he got it into her. They all laughed.

That was twelve years ago. Then, Moremi was a fifteen-year-old maiden betrothed to a young man of twenty-five. Now, at the time that our story began, when the igbo forest people began their terrifying raids into the territory of the Ife people, Moremi was twenty-seven years old. She was the mother of a nine-year-old boy who was the center of her life. Far above anything she had or would ever have in her life, she loved her son dearly. His name was Oluorogbo.

The story of the birth of this child was a miracle. It was a concession won at great cost from the gods. Even now, tears would well up in Moremi’s eyes when she remembered what she went through before she had this child. For he was an abiku.

The concept of the child that lives briefly on earth, dies, and goes back to the spirit world is an idea that had been with our people since the earliest days. An abiku comes back again and again to be born by the same woman. Some blamed such children and called them wicked for targeting and tormenting a woman who was their mother. Some said it was the fault of the woman or her family. Surely, there was a ritual she had overlooked, some sacrifice to a god that should have been performed but was not at the time she came to her husband’s house.

For this reason, many families enacted elaborate rituals that a new bride had to perform before going to her husband’s house. But many wives had performed these costly rites. Yet they bore many children that did not survive infancy. They continued to suffer repeated losses of their young infants and toddlers.

Moremi, when she was younger and heard these stories, tried to think of the bigger picture. Her thinking was that little children were still very close to the spirit world where we all came from. Naturally, some of them found it hard to adjust to their new home. They missed their friends back in their home in the clouds, where they caused rain to fall on the earth. Especially when she contemplated the harshness of existence in the world below, Moremi, before her own marriage, said she could understand why thoughts of the languid ease of life in the sky would tempt these temporary wayfarers to want to go back to their home in the sky.

Then why did they agree to be born and come to the earth in the first place? Some women asked this question, greatly exasperated.

The quiet reply was that these spirit-children lost all memory of their lives on earth when they went back to the sky. They therefore innocently volunteered to come to earth again when their turn came up. They were rather to be pitied than chastised. Everyone knew they would rather be spending their time creating rain in the sky than enduring the sufferings of the earthly world.

Moremi became pregnant just two months after her marriage. In those days, Olumuwa was very attached to her and had lain with her almost every day in the first few months of their conjugal union. And even after she got pregnant, her husband did not keep away from her, so strong was his infatuation and physical attraction for her. But what Moremi remembered was the sickness in those early months of her first pregnancy, the feeling of bloating, the dizziness, and the unnatural craving for strange things to eat and nibble at. Then the symptoms became manageable, and she got used to them. She now looked forward to having her baby.

She had pleasant dreams in which everything turned out well. She would cherish her baby. She would put him to her breast and sing songs to him. She was already sure it was going to be a boy. She thought of suitable names that his father would give him. The priest had cast his kola nuts, interpreted the odu, and said everything was going to be fine. What this priest did not know, or did not tell her, was that the baby would not live for more than a month. Moremi was devastated when the infant was found one morning lifeless, not breathing, its body cold, limp, and blue.

Within a year, she was pregnant again. But her joy was tempered with caution. She went to a different priest, who applied seven small longitudinal scarification marks in the middle of her abdomen just below her navel. He used a sharp iron scalpel that stung Moremi until she bit her lips to stop herself from crying. But it didn’t work. The child barely lived three months before it too passed away. She had named her second child Durotimi—Stay with me. But as with her first child, an earthly mother’s pleas were not enough. But she soon became pregnant again, determined to challenge her fate. Defiantly, she named the child Kosoko—There is no hoe to dig the ground—hoping that the child would not want to be thrown into a rubbish heap without a proper burial if he chose to die. The threat went unheeded. Kosoko died after two months of life.

Now Moremi took more precautions. When she got pregnant this time, she refused to let her husband sleep with her until she had the baby. She drank a concoction given to her by the priest every day. She wore an amulet around her neck and another around her waist. But her third child, a daughter, lived for only four months. She had named her Madojutimi—Do not shame me.

It was only then that a fourth priest made the correct diagnosis. He declared that it was one and the same baby who came back over and over to torment its mother. This child was an abiku from the spirit world who delighted in putting its parents through an endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. This time, therefore, when Moremi became pregnant, there were no half measures. Even her husband, Olumuwa, paid attention and swung into action. Apart from the previous adahunse, the shrines of two other gods, Orisa-oko and Orisa-ile, were consulted. But to the chagrin of the distraught Olumuwa and the now desperate Moremi, these were not enough. This child also died before completing the first year of life.

It was after this that Moremi went outside the city walls to a shrine in a cave by the river Osirimi. It was there that an old priestess lived who served the goddess of the river, which was also named Osirimi.

The story of Osirimi was older than the story of Ile-Ife. She was known and worshipped by the people who had lived in Ile-Ife before our people arrived from the east. In her earthly life, Osirimi had been a beautiful maiden whose husband was said to have sacrificed her for his crops to be plentiful. In return, the gods accepted her into their company. They made her the goddess of the nearby river, which was then named Osirimi after her. Osirimi became known as the goddess who epitomized a person’s desire to make a great personal sacrifice for the common good.

It was to the priestess of the river goddess, Osirimi, that Moremi now came for help. Moremi’s husband insisted there would be no half measures. He made Moremi take many gifts to the goddess. There were three white doves, three turtles, three white rabbits, and three white she-goats. To get to see the old priestess, Moremi first had to look for a grove of orombo trees on the south bank of the river. Then she had to enter a cave inside, which the old woman attended to the rituals demanded by her goddess with the help of two young female acolytes.

Moremi did as she had been told. First, she paid homage by using the correct kneeling procedure to honor a goddess. For it was indeed the goddess Osirimi who was here before her in the body of the old woman, the priestess. Moremi went before the old priestess on her knees. Then she shifted her weight until she was sitting on her buttocks. She now leaned to the right to touch the ground with the elbow of her right arm, her palm touching her neck. Then she leaned to the left and did the same thing with her left elbow. This was the obeisance of her people before a priestess of a high goddess or a great monarch like the Ooni.

Having made this obeisance, Moremi started to talk. But the priestess held up a hand, bidding her to hold her tongue. The priestess already knew what she was there for. In a voice that trembled with age and infirmity, she gave instructions to Moremi. While the priestess talked, Moremi looked around the cave. It should have been very dark, being a cloistered space shut off from the outside light. But it was surprisingly bright and well lit, although Moremi could not see any lamp or fire burning anywhere. The cave was illuminated by a bright light that emanated from the high vaulted roof above her head.

Moremi went home and carried out all the priestess’s instructions. She had a special igbadi or amulet made, which she wore around her waist. She pushed it down low so that it hung tight around her buttocks. She had also been given an ado by the old priestess, which she brought home with her from the shrine of Osirimi. Every morning, she held this ado in front of her face and spoke to it thus:

Spirit child, hear me!

It is what we tell the parrot that it repeats.

It is what we tell the kola nut when we plant it

That it becomes.

When the iroko tree grows,

It stays in one spot.

Stay here, spirit child,

And do not leave me.

The charm of Osirimi worked. And this was how Moremi had her only son, Oluorogbo. That was nine years in the past. Now Moremi was still young, only twenty-seven years of age. She was petite and small statured, with rounded hips and firm breasts that bounced up and down when she walked. Her delicate figure was complemented by an oval face with large dark round eyes, a small delicate nose, and full lips that smiled all the time. She was certainly attractive and well formed. But what made her stand out was her unselfishness.

Moremi was made to give, everyone said.

And indeed, Moremi was the most beloved young woman in the town of Ile-Ife. Whenever there was a gentle word to be spoken, food to be cooked, a child to be nursed after its mother had died in childbirth, or an elderly citizen to be taken care of, people called on Moremi. She was the pride of her husband and the favorite of the whole town.

*     *     *     *     *

Moremi was also a patriot. She loved Ile-Ife, the land of her birth. It was the place of the gods that had given her life and nurtured her as she grew to womanhood. Ile-Ife had given her the husband and the son she loved so much. She knew she would do anything in token of the great love she had for her city and her people. So when the great crisis of the marauding forest people came upon Ile-Ife and persisted without any remedy, Moremi decided to put matters in her own hands. To rid her country of this menace, she would lay down her life if possible. She decided to make a trip to the priestess of the goddess of the river Osirimi, the same one who had helped her bear her son, Oluorogbo.

To get to the river Osirimi, Moremi had to cross many farms and a forest that was so dark with its canopy of tall trees that it seemed to have turned the midday afternoon into night. But she knew her way. She had come this way nine years earlier when she had come to the goddess to remove from her the curse of the abiku. She came alone, having refused her husband’s entreaties that he should accompany her. She came at last to the valley in which the river wound its course. There was a grove of orombo trees that grew very close together. They appeared to be bigger and more imposing than she had remembered them. Then she came to the mouth of the cave that was cunningly hidden among the bushes.

Though she was sure no one could have known she was coming, two young women came out of the bushes to lead her in. Without a word, each with one hand on her arm, they led her inside the cave in which lay the shrine of the goddess, Osirimi. These were the two acolytes of the priestess. They were very young. To Moremi, they looked as if they could not have been older than thirteen. Yet their demeanor and the look in their inscrutable deep eyes bespoke the wisdom of those women of mystery and knowledge known as the ’ageless ones.’ They spoke no word to Moremi, but she knew exactly what they wanted her to do. She bowed her head and allowed herself to be led meekly inside the grotto.

The two acolytes also lowered their heads as they passed through the low archway that was the entrance to the cave. They were now in a sort of antechamber that led to another archway. They passed through this, and suddenly, a great light came out of nowhere, almost blinding Moremi. She had experienced this before at her previous visit, but it was still a great shock. They were in a massive hollowed-out compartment in the rock. The light that had blinded her came from above, although she could not see any lamp or an opening in the high vaulted ceiling of the cave through which the sun could have shone through. Directly in front of her was a figure seated on a low stool. It was the same old priestess of the goddess Osirimi.

Moremi knelt in front of the priestess after making the ritual obeisance. Then the priestess spoke. Her voice filled the chamber with a deep resonant echo that belied the age and apparent frailty of an old woman.

Why do you come to my shrine, my daughter, in the heat of the afternoon, when you should be cooking the mid-day meal for your husband? the voice demanded.

Moremi then told the priestess, whom she knew was only the vehicle to the goddess, the reason for her visit. At first, her voice was high, frightened, and hesitant. But then she found a strange courage from somewhere within her. She began to describe in a loud yet calm voice the narrative of the recent suffering of her people at the hands of the forest people. She spoke of her own determination to put a stop to the depredations of the igbo spirits which had left the people of Ile-Ife frightened and defenseless.

Moremi stopped and stared at the priestess. The priestess was no longer listening. Her head hung low on her chest, and there was a soft snoring sound coming from her. Her frail body was limp and deathly still. At first, Moremi thought the priestess had become bored with her narrative and had fallen asleep. Then she realized that the priestess had gone into a trance to communicate with her goddess.

The presence of the goddess could now be felt in the room. The bright light that lit the cave was now even brighter, a white transcendent glow that seared and burned the eyes. Moremi had to squint as she stared at the priestess as she waited for the message from the goddess. She felt a tenseness in her body, and her brain whirled and tugged as if it was going to detach from her body. She felt the spirit of the goddess enter her too. She watched, fascinated, as her right arm, assuming a life of its own, writhed in a sinuous motion by her side, even though she tried to will it to keep still. Her whole body vibrated as a warm sensation suffused her being. The spirit of the goddess had also overcome the two acolytes. And in them, the effect was violent and overwhelming. They fell to the ground, convulsed, and foamed at the mouth.

Moremi did not have long to wait, for a voice now came out of the still body of the priestess, only it did not come from her mouth but appeared to be issuing out of the very walls of the cave. It was a deep, booming voice that was full of majesty and command. It felt as old as the earth. It was deep and penetrating, like what was spoken at the beginning of time. As the voice spoke, Moremi listened intently. The voice told her in great detail what she had to do before she would be given a plan to save her people.

When Moremi got home, she carried out all the instructions of the goddess Osirimi which had been delivered through the voice in that mysterious cave. First, she fasted for seven days. She did not eat or drink, though she became weak and dizzy with hunger and thirst. After her fast, she had to make a sacrifice to the goddess Osirimi. For this, she made another trip to that ancient shrine by the river. There,