3.49
— Once upon a time, there were two farmers. While they were ploughing their fields, a stranger walked down the path separating the two. She caught their eye with her magnificently coloured hat and twinkle in her eye.
Later, the farmers were chatting after a hard day. One said to the other: ‘Do you recall the stranger who passed by? What a striking red hat she had…’ The other replied: ‘I do recall a stranger—there was only one—but she most certainly did not have a red hat on; the hat was black.’
The first furrowed his brow: ‘I think perhaps you’ve had too much sun. As clear as day, her hat was red.’ The second, dumbfounded: ‘I think it’s you who has had too much: her hat was definitely black!’
And on it went, they got increasingly agitated, and were about to come to blows when, finally, a small spirit came to them upon a twilight breeze: ‘Farmers, you are both right and both wrong: her hat was red, her hat was black. In one way, it was red; in the other, it was black.
‘And this is what she does: she walks along, between beings, with a twinkle in her eye, and her hat of many colours.’[1]
[1] Inspired by Eshu: Allison Sellers and Joel E. Tishken, “The Place of Èṣù in the Yorùbá Pantheon,” in Èṣù: Yoruba God, Power, and the Imaginative Frontiers, ed. Toyin Falola (Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 2013), p. 48–9; Donald Cosentino, “Who is that Fellow in the Many-Colored Cap? Transformations of Eshu in Old and New World Mythologies,” The Journal of American Folklore 100.397 (Jul.–Sep. 1987): p. 262.