How do you know when it is love? What is love and where can you find it? Most of these questions can be answered by looking at the stories of people who etched their stories in the sands of time.

I mean literally because statues or momentum were built or left behind to remember these stories.

Want to know other love stories asides Romeo and Juliet? Then, let’s get to it.

Sango and Oya
The love story of Sango and Oya is a story as old as time itself. Sango, the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning, was known to have two wives; Oshun and Oba, but his heart only had space for his concubine, Oya.
Sango could summon thunder and she could control winds and shape-shift into various animals, a perfect match, at least that’s what Sango thought. As he gave her total access to him, they became a duo no one could reckon with. You could say they were their own version of Bonny and Clyde.
Oya advised Sango to get rid of his two powerful war generals, Timi Olofa Ina and Gbonka. Timi went to Ede while Gbonka returned later on to confront him, but like Samson and Delilah, Oya had neutralised the power of his thunderbolt, this time by getting the blood from her menstrual flow on it. He tried to refortify but the thunder from that exercise struck his palace and razed it down. One version stated he was not willing to fight and disappeared, while another states that he hanged himself.
There a numerous accounts to how Oya died but the most conversant one is Oya was saddened by Sango’s disappearance/death that she took her own life.

Chih-nii and the Cowherd
Chih-nii was a god-like Chinese figure who is remembered for making gowns out of brocade and clouds. Due to her hard work, her father married her off to a cowherd, but she fell so deeply in love she forgot all her talent for sewing and making gowns.
Her father was so furious that he sent them away, casting the Cowherd into the stars on one side of the sky and Chih-nii the Spinster into the other. Between them, he put the Heavenly River, also known as the Milky Way. The two can only see each other once a year when the stars align correctly.

Zal and Rudabeh
The Persian legend says Zal was cast away to a mountaintop when he was born. As he grew older, he was given a feather that he was told would keep him safe on his journey to be reunited with his father. During his journeys, Zal fell in love with the story of a beautiful woman named Rudabeh who had dark ringlets that reached her feet and long eyelashes. When he finally found his father, Zal was heartbroken to know that his family was actually the enemy of Rudabeh’s.
Against the odds, he found her and crept under her window one night where she let him climb up her hair. The two instantly fell in love, so deeply that their families couldn’t deny the marriage and peace finally fell between them all. When Rudabeh was sick in labour with their son, Zal threw his feather into a fire to protect them both.

Orpheus and Eurydice
Orpheus was the son of a king and a musician. He was taught how to play the lyre by the god Apollo when he was an adolescent; his music had the ability to charm the animals and make the trees dance. Orpheus fell in love with a nymph named Eurydice. Orpheus loved her dearly and married her. One day, Aristaeus, a minor god, saw and pursued Eurydice, who stepped on a viper, was bitten and died instantly. Distraught, Orpheus played and sang so mournfully that all the nymphs and deities wept and told him to travel to the Underworld to retrieve her. He travelled to the underworld and his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone, who allowed him to take her back to the world of the living. In another version, Orpheus played his lyre to put Cerberus, the guardian of Hades, to sleep, after which Eurydice was allowed to return with Orpheus to the world of the living. Like every gift from these mythical gods, this one came with a condition. Which was that he couldn’t look at his wife’s face till he reached the upper world. But Orpheus had been suspecting that Hades tricked him. He crossed over but as Eurydice was about to cross the threshold, he looked back and his precious wife sank bank into the underworld. When Orpheus later was killed by the Maenads at the orders of Dionysus, his soul ended up in the Underworld where he was reunited with Eurydice.