{"collection":"African","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/afr/ife/ife3.htm","path":"afr/ife/ife3.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/afr/ife/ife3.htm","text":"Sacred-Texts Africa Index Previous Next\nA white man visits \u00cdf\u00e8, the sacred city of the Y\u00f3rubas, and asks to hear the history of the place. The \u00d3rn\u00ed, the religious head of Y\u00f3rubaland, begins, and directs the Babal\u00e1wo Ar\u00e1ba, the chief-priest of \u00cdfa to continue.\n| | The \u00d3rn\u00ed of \u00cdf\u00e8 speaks: O\u00edbo, you have asked to hear our lore, The legends of the World's young hours\u2014and where Could truth in greater surety have its home Than in the precincts of the shrines of Those Who made the World, and in the mouths of priests To whom their doings have been handed down From sire to son? | \n| Ar\u00e1mf\u00e8 reigns in Heaven; | Before this World was made There reigned Ar\u00e1mf\u00e8 in the realm of Heaven Amidst his sons. Old were the hills around him; The Sun had shone upon his vines and cornfields Since time past reckoning. Old was Ar\u00e1mf\u00e8, The father of the Gods: his youth had been The youth of Heaven. . . Once when the King reclined Upon the dais, and his sons lay prostrate In veneration at his feet, he spoke | \n| tells his sons of the creation of Heaven; | Of the great things he purposed: \"My sons, you know But fair things which I made for you, before I called your spirits from the Dusk: for always p. 14 Your eyes have watched the shadows and the wind On waving corn, and I have given you The dances and the chorus of the night\u2014 An age of mirth and sunrise (the wine of Heaven) Is your existence. You have not even heard Of the grey hour when my young eyes first opened To gaze upon a herbless Mass, unshaped And unadorned. But I knew well the heart Of Him-Who-Speaks-Not, the far-felt Purpose that gave Me birth; I laboured and the grim years passed: Streams flowed along their sunny beds; I set The stars above me, and the hills about; I fostered budding trees, and taught the birds Their song\u2014the unshapely I had formed to beauty, And as the ages came I loved to make The beautiful more fair. . . All went not well: A noble animal my mind conceived Emerged in loathsome form to prey upon My gentle creatures; a river, born to bask In sunlit channels and mirror the steep hills, Tore down its banks and ravaged field and plain; While cataract and jagged precipice, Now grand with years, remind me of dread days p. 15 When Heaven tottered, and wide rifts sundered my young Fair hills, and all seemed lost. Yet\u2014I prevailed. Think, now, if the accomplished whole be Heaven, How wonderful the anxious years of slow And hazardous achievement\u2014a destiny For Gods. But yours it has not been to lead Creation by the cliff's-edge way from Mass To Paradise.\" He paused on the remembrance, And Great Or\u00edsha cried: \"Can we do naught? What use in godhead without deeds to do? Where yearns a helpless region for a hand To guide it?\" And Old Ar\u00e1mf\u00e8 answered him: | \n| sends them to make the World. | \"My son, your day approaches. Far-off, the haze Rests always on the outer waste which skirts Our realm; beyond, a nerveless Mass lies cold 'Neath floods which some malign unreason heaves. Od\u00fawa, first-born of my sons, to you I give The five-clawed Bird, the sand of power.1 Go now, Call a despairing land to smiling life Above the jealous sea, and found sure homesteads For a new race whose destiny is not The eternal life of Gods. You are their judge; p. 16 Yours is the kingship, and to you all Gods And men are subject. Wisest of my sons, Or\u00edsha, yours is the grateful task to loose Vague spirits1 waiting for the Dawn\u2014to make The race that shall be; and to you I give This bag of Wisdom's guarded lore and arts For Man's well-being and advancement. And you, My younger sons, the chorus and the dance, The voice of worship and the crafts are yours To teach\u2014that the new thankful race may know The mirth of Heaven and the joys of labour.\" Then Od\u00fawa said: \"Happy our life has been, And I would gladly roam these hills for ever, Your son and servant. But to your command I yield; and in my kingship pride o'ersteps Sorrow and heaviness. Yet, Lord Ar\u00e1mf\u00e8, I am your first-born: wherefore do you give The arts and wisdom to Or\u00edsha? I, The King, will be obeyed; the hearts of men Will turn in wonder to the God who spells Strange benefits.\" But Ar\u00e1mf\u00e8 said \"Enough; To each is fitting task is given. Farewell.\" | \n| The Gods leave Heaven. | p. 17 Here the Beginning was: from Ar\u00e1mf\u00e8's vales Through the desert regions the exiled Gods approached The edge of Heaven, and into blackness plunged\u2014 A sunless void o'er godless water lying\u20141 To seize an empire from the Dark, and win Amidst ungoverned waves a sovereignty. | \n| Od\u00fawa steals the bag and causes War on Earth. | But by the roadside while Or\u00edsha slept Od\u00fawa came by stealth and bore away The bag Ar\u00e1mf\u00e8 gave. Thus was the will Of God undone: for thus with the charmed sand Cast wide on the unmastered sea, his sons Called forth a World of envy and of war. Of Man's Creation, and of the restraint Ol\u00f3kun2 placed upon the chafing sea, Of the unconscious years which passed in darkness Till dazzling sunshine touched the unused eyes Of men, of War and magic\u2014my priest shall tell you, And all the Great Ones did before the day They vanished to return to the calm hills | \n| Life in \u00cdf\u00e8 is as it was in the time of the Gods | p. 18 Of Old Ar\u00e1mf\u00e8's realm . . . They went away; But still with us their altars and their priests Remain, and from their shrines the hidden Gods Peer forth with joy to watch the dance they taught, And hear each night their chorus with the drum: For changeless here the early World endures In this first stronghold of humanity, And, constant as the buffets of the waves Of Queen Ol\u00f3kun on the shore, the song, The dance of those old Gods abide, the mirth, The life . . . I, too, am born of the Beginning: | \n| Od\u00fam\u2019la speaks for the Gods; | For, when from the sight of men the Great Gods passed, They left on Earth \u00d3rn\u00ed Od\u00fam\u2019la1 charged To be a father to a mourning people, To tend the shrines and utter solemn words Inspired by Those invisible. And when Od\u00fam\u2019la's time had come to yield the crown, To wait upon the River's brink,2 and cross To Old Ar\u00e1mf\u00e8\u2014\u00cdfa,3 in his wisdom, | \n| and lives for ever in the person of the \u00d3rn\u00ed. | p. 19 Proclaimed that son with whom Od\u00fam\u2019la's soul Abode. Thus has it ever been; and now With me that Being is\u2014about, within\u2014 And on our sacred days these lips pronounce The words of Odud\u00fawa and Or\u00edsha. | \n1 See Note I on the Creation of the Earth.\n1 See Note IV on the Creation of Man.\n1 See Note I on the Creation.\n2 The Goddess of the Sea.\n1 See Note II on Od\u00fam\u2019la, the first \u00d3rn\u00ed of \u00cdl\u00e8.\n2 The River which separates this World from the next.\n3 The Messenger of the Gods. See Note XII on his divination.","title":"I. THE BEGINNING.","type":"page"}