Oshosi: a single arrow

Oshosi is the hunter, and in Brazil they say he was king of Ketu. Pierre Verger records this Bahian saying and adds a piece of information that changes the question: in Africa his cult was almost extinct, and it is in the New World, in Brazil and in Cuba, that it lives on (Verger, Orixás, p. 51). How did a hunter with no temple in his homeland become king of a city that no longer existed in the same way?

This Study reads three myths from the Oshosi chapter of Reginaldo Prandi's Mitologia dos Orixás, which answer that question by different paths. In the first, a single arrow kills the bird the witches sent to Ife, and from it comes the very name Oshosi. In the second, another single arrow, shot on the last day, leads Orunmila to give him Ketu to rule. In the third, he hits nothing at all: the one who gives him the city is Oshun, and the price is that he forgot the hunger of his own people.

Then come two myths from the same chapter that tell the reverse, what happens when the hunter shoots too much or shoots without a target. And a myth from another chapter in which Ketu has a different king. Each story is cited by the exact title in the source.