THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
Eshu is the messenger between heaven and earth, keeper of crossroads, thresholds, and marketplaces. The first portion of every sacrifice is his, for he carries offerings up to the orisha they are meant for; his face is carved on the rim of the Ifa divination tray, and the sacrifices Ifa prescribes pass through his hands. His shrine is often no more than a chunk of red laterite called yangi, set by a doorway or a fork in the road and fed with palm oil.
In his most famous tale, two friends sworn never to quarrel worked neighboring fields. Eshu strolled down the boundary path wearing a cap red on one side and black on the other. Afterward one friend spoke of the stranger in the red cap, the other of the black; the argument grew until knives came out, and when both were dragged before the king, Eshu appeared and cheerfully claimed the work as his own. Versions of the story are told all over Yorubaland and the Americas.
In the nineteenth century Samuel Ajayi Crowther's Yoruba Bible rendered Satan as 'Eshu', a mistranslation that has dogged him ever since and that scholars and devotees still contest. In Cuba he is Elegua, owner of roads and keys, greeted first in every ceremony; in Brazil, Exu; his Fon counterpart Legba entered Haitian Vodou.
