Three African Fairy Tales

Retold by Alexander McCall Smith

· The Girl Who Married A Lion

· The Milk Bird

A girl who only had one brother liked the place where she and her parents lived. There was a river nearby, where she could draw water, and the family's cattle enjoyed the sweet grass which grew by the riverside. The huts were shaded from the hot sun by the broad leaves of the trees, and at night there was a soft breeze from the hills, which kept them cool. Passers-by, who called in to drink water from the family's calabashes[1], would say how much they envied that quiet place, and how their own places were so much drier and dustier.

Then a terrible thing happened, which spoiled the happiness of the family. The girl had gone to fetch water from the river and was walking back to her hut with a large calabash on her head. Suddenly she began to feel that she was being followed. At first she did nothing, but then, when the feeling became quite strong, she turned round and looked behind her. There was nothing to be seen, although the tall grass moved and there was a faint sound, rather like that which a creature makes when it hurries through a bush.

The girl continued on her way. After she had taken a few more steps she again heard a noise. This time she swung round more sharply, dropping the calabash to the ground. There was a man behind her, crouching down, half in the grass, half out of it.

The girl was frightened by the sight of the man, but she tried not to show her fear. He smiled at her, and rose to his feet.

"You must not be afraid of me," he said. "I am just walking in the grass."

The girl could not understand why a man should wish to walk in the grass, but she did not say anything. The man came up to her and reached out to touch her.

"You are a nice, fat girl," he said.

The girl was now very nervous and moved away from the man's touch.

"My father's place is just there," she said. "I can see the smoke from his fire."

The man looked in the direction of the huts.

"If that is so," he said, "I can walk with you to your father's place, where I can eat some food."

The girl walked ahead of the man and soon they came to the circle of huts under the trees. There the stranger waited at the gate while the girl went in to tell her father that there was a man who wished to eat some food. The father came out, called to the man, and invited him to sit on a stone under one of the trees. Food was made by the girl's mother and given to the man. He took it, and put it all into his mouth in one piece. Then he swallowed, and all the food was gone. The girl had not seen a man eat in this way before and wondered why he should be so hungry.

After the man had eaten, he got up and said goodbye to the father. He looked around him before he left, as if he was trying to remember what the family looked like and what they owned. Then he walked off and was soon obscured by the tall grass that grew in that part.

The girl went to stand by her father's side.

"That was a very wicked man," said the father. "I am very sorry that he visited this place."

"I am sure he will not come back," the girl said. "He was going somewhere else when I met him."

The father shook his head sadly.

"Now that he is here," he said. "We shall have to leave. I shall tell your brother to collect his sleeping mat and get ready for us to go to some other place."

The girl could not believe that the family would be leaving the place where they had lived for so long and of which she felt so fond. She tried to persuade her father to stay, but he was convinced that they were in great danger by staying where they were.

"It is better to move now," he said, "than to regret it later."

The girl wept, but her tears were ignored by her father. Soon he had all the family's possessions loaded on his back and was calling out to the others to follow him on the path.

"I shall not come with you," the girl said defiantly. "I have been happy in this place and see no reason to move."

The girl's mother pleaded with her to go, but the girl refused. Eventually the father became impatient.

"If you must stay," he said, "then you should at least go and live in a cave in the hillside. There is a place there where there is a large rock which can be used as a door. At night you must roll that rock in behind you and let nobody into the cave."

The girl agreed to this, as she knew that nearby cave. It was comfortable and cool, and she thought she would be happy there. As the rest of the family disappeared down the path that led to their new place, she took her mat and her pots to the cave and set them on a ledge at the back. Then, since it was beginning to get dark, she rolled the rock in the front into position. Inside the cave, it was pitch black, but the girl felt safe and she slept well that first night.

The next day, the girl's brother paid her a visit to see how she was. She told him of how comfortable she had been in the cave and of how well she had slept.

"I am safe there," she explained. "The rock blocks the mouth of the cave and I shall open it to nobody. If you come, though, you should sing this song and I shall know that it is you."

The girl then sang a short song, which the boy listened to. He kept the words in his mind, as he planned to visit the girl that night to make sure that she was safe and that the rock was acting as a strong enough door.

That evening, when he returned, it was already dark. As he approached the cave, he sang the song which she had taught him:

“There is a rock here and the cave is dark; Open the cave, my sister, and let me in.”

When the girl heard this song, she knew straight away that her brother was outside. She pushed at the rock and it rolled to one side. Her brother was pleased to see that the song worked and that his sister was safe. He gave her the food that he had brought her and then said goodbye.

"Make sure that you roll the rock back once I am outside," he said.

"I shall always remember that," his sister replied. "A girl could not live alone in a cave like this unless she had a rock for protection."

The brother came the next day, and the day after that. On his third visit there was something that worried him. Not far from the cave he noticed that there were footprints on the ground and that lying nearby there was a bone which had been gnawed[2]. He picked up the bone and looked at it. Whoever had eaten it must have had a great appetite, for his teeth had cut right into the bone to extract its goodness. The footprints were large, too, and the sight of them made the brother feel uneasy.

He arrived at the front of the cave and began to sing his song. As he did so, he had a strange feeling as if there was somebody watching him. He turned round, but all that he saw was the wind moving through the dry brown grass and a rain bird circling in the sky. He finished the song, and the girl rolled back the rock to let him into the cave.

"I would like you to come and live with your family again," he said to the girl. "We are sad that you are not with us."

"I am sorry too," she replied. "And yet I love this place too much to leave it. Perhaps one day my father will decide to come back here."

The boy shook his head. He knew that his father would never come back now that he had found that he liked the other place to which he had gone. Soon the memory of this place would fade and the family would talk no more about it.

The boy ate some food with his sister and then left. As he walked away, he again felt that there was somebody watching him, but again he saw nothing but the wind and a small snake that moved like a dark arrow through the dry leaves on the ground.

The man who had driven the family away from that place was a cannibal. Now he had heard the boy singing his special song to his sister in the cave and he had remembered the words. Under a large tree not far away, he practiced the song which the boy sang. His voice, though, was too rough, and he realized that no girl would be fooled into believing that it was the voice of her young brother.

The cannibal had a way to deal with this. He made a fire, and on the fire he put a number of stones. Then, when these stones were red hot, he put them in his mouth and let them lie against that part of his throat that made the sound. After a few minutes he spat out the stones and tried the song again. The stones had done what he had hoped they would do and his voice was now as soft as the boy's.

Inside the cave, the girl had settled herself to sleep on her sleeping mat when she heard her brother singing outside. It surprised her that he should come back so soon, but then she remembered that he had left a calabash in the cave and might be returning to collect it.

"I am coming, my brother," the girl sang out. "The rock will move back and let you in."

By the time that the mouth of the cave was half open, the girl realized that it was not her brother who was standing outside. When she saw the cannibal, her heart gave a leap of fear and she struggled to roll the rock back. The cannibal, though, was too quick and had seized her before she could seal off the cave mouth.

The girl screamed as the cannibal lifted her off the ground and began to tie her arms and legs with a rope he had with him. Then, when she was firmly tied up, he went to a place nearby and began to make a fire so that he could cook the girl and eat her. As he made the fire, he sang a special song, of the sort that cannibals sing, in which he told of how a poor hungry cannibal had found a fat girl in a cave.

The girl wept with sorrow at the thought of what had happened to her. She wept for her father and mother, whom she would never see again, and she wept for her stupidity in trying to stay in so dangerous a place. Through her tears, she sang a sad song, about how a girl who lived in a cave was captured by a wicked cannibal.

The boy had felt so uneasy on his way home that he had come back to the cave. Now he was hiding in the grass, listening to the sad song of his sister. When he saw the cannibal bending over his fire, the boy rushed forward and pushed him into the flames. The many skins which the cannibal was wearing soon caught fire and he ran wildly away, letting out strange cries as he ran.

The boy untied his sister and then led her back to their father's new place. That night, the girl told her father of what had happened. He was worried at the thought of the narrow escape that she had had, but he was relieved that she was now safe. He was glad, too, to hear that the cannibal had run away, as this meant that the family could now return to that place where they had been so happy, and where the girl knew they would be happy once again.

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The Girl Who Married A Lion

Nearly everybody was happy when Kumalo's daughter married. Kumalo was pleased with the many fine cattle which his new son-in-law had given him; his wife was happy that she would no longer have to worry about what sort of man her daughter would marry; and the daughter herself was pleased that she had found such a fine, strong husband.

Only the new wife's brother was unhappy.

"I think that my sister has married a lion," he said to his friends. "This is really a lion disguised as a man."

Nobody took this seriously and they laughed at the young man when he said such things. But the brother knew that what he said was true, and he could not bring himself to talk to this new brother-in-law of his.

"I cannot talk to a lion," he said.

Several years passed and the wife had two strong sons, who were as handsome as their father. Still the wife's brother muttered that the husband was a lion disguised as a man and still he refused to do anything with his brother-in-law.

"You're being stupid," Kumalo said. "Look at all the cattle that my daughter's husband gave me when he married her. Where would a lion get such cattle?"

The young man could not think of an answer to that question, but he refused to change his mind. He knew that sooner or later there would be trouble. And indeed one day his sister came to him and asked to talk to him in private.

"I am worried about this husband of mine," she whispered to her brother. "He has a strange smell on him."

"What sort of smell?" the brother asked.

The woman shrugged her shoulders. "It is a very strange smell," she said. "I cannot describe it."

In order to help his sister, the young man agreed to go to her hut and to smell some of the things that belonged to the husband. The husband was out at the time, and so it was easy for the wife to show the things that he carried with him. The brother smelled them and frowned.

"That is lion smell," he said.

The woman was very worried and she went with her brother to speak to their father. The old man was not happy to hear this news. He did not want to believe that his son-in-law was a lion, and so he said that they would test him to see if he really was a lion.

"We will put a goat outside his hut at night," he said. "If the goat is gone in the morning, then we will know that a lion has eaten it. That will prove that he is a lion."

Everyone agreed that this would be a good test and that night a goat was tried with a rope outside the son-in-law's hut. The next morning, the father and the son went to the hut and saw that only the bones of the goat were left.

"No man would eat a goat like that," the son said triumphantly. "He is surely a lion."

The old man had to agree. It was hard to admit that such a thing had happened, but he had no other choice. There was only one thing to do: to fetch their spears and to chase the son-in-law away from the home. The son-in-law was angry, of course, and tried to resist, but he could not fight the sharp points of the spears. As he ran off into the bush, both the father and his son saw that the marks where his feet had been were marks of a lion. This proved to them that they had been right. The woman was upset to have lost her fine husband, but she understood that it would have been impossible for her to continue to live with a lion. At any time her husband might have threatened to eat her.

Her brother thought that she would now be happy, but she came to see him again and it was clear that once again she was anxious.

"If my husband was a lion," she said to her brother, "then what are my two sons?"

The brother thought for a moment. He had not considered this problem and it made him worried. He loved his two nephews and it would be a sad blow if they turned out to be lions when they grew up. He looked closely at the two boys, but there were no signs that they were lions.

"We must be quite sure about this," he said to his sister. "We will have to test the boys in a special way."

Making a cage out of thin trees, the brother carried this to a lonely place where lions liked to walk. He put the cage on the ground and went back to fetch the two boys. Then he took them to the cage and told them to get into it and sit there.

"I am testing this cage," he explained to the boys. "I want to see if it is strong enough to give protection against lions. I will come back tonight and see if the lions have managed to break into it."

The younger boy became very scared of being left in the cage, but the elder one comforted him.

"Our uncle would not put us in danger," he said. "This cage must be strong enough to keep the lions away."

The uncle had told his nephews that he was going back to his hut, but in fact he hid in some trees nearby and waited to see what happened. After a while, two lions walked up to the cage and began to sniff at it. The two boys cowered in the corner of the cage, and the uncle could hear the younger one weeping.

After they had sniffed at the cage, the lions began to roar. Then they started to dash at the cage, shaking the thin wooden bars with their great weight. The two boys seemed very frightened and the uncle decided that if he did not go down to their rescue they would soon be eaten.

Leaping from his tree, the uncle rushed towards the lions, waving a long spear in his hand. The lions saw the spear and ran off into the bush, leaving the two frightened boys in the cage.

"Thank you, Uncle," the elder boy said. "I thought that we might be eaten by the lions."

The uncle smiled as he let his nephews out of the cage. Now he knew that they were not lions, for if they had been lions the real lions would have smelled it and would not have tried to attack them.

"Your sons are not lions," the uncle said to the boys' mother.

"I am glad," she said.

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The Milk Bird

A man who had two clever children — a boy and a girl — used to go to a place where he knew were juicy wild fruits to be picked. This man knew a great deal about fruits, and he was always able to distinguish between those which were good to eat and those which were bitter in the mouth. His family, who all liked these fruits, used to wait to meet him in the evening and enjoy the food which he brought back from that special place.

It was while the man was gathering fruits that he saw a most unusual bird. There were many birds in the fruit place, as they liked to eat the seeds which the fruits produced. Many of the birds in that part were had round bellies from the goodness of their food, and could not fly as high or as quickly as other birds. For this reason, if anybody wanted to catch a bird, then that was the easiest place for it to be done.

The unusual bird was standing in the grass, his head barely showing. If the man had not been looking in that direction, he would have missed him, but, as it happened, his eyes alighted on the bird's head and he drew in his breath in astonishment.

On the top of the bird's head there was a plume of feathers. These feathers were not grey, as were the feathers on top of the snake-eating birds, but were coloured red and green. The neck, which could just be made out, was white.

The man watched the bird, which had not seen him and was showing no sign of fear. After a moment or two, the bird walked proudly forward a few paces, and so the man was able to see more of its body. He saw now that the belly was covered with red feathers and those on the bird's long legs were white and black. The bird moved its head, as if looking for something, and took a few more steps.

The man watched the bird for a few moments. There was a great deal of fruit that had ripened that day, but he found that he could think only of the bird and of how he would like to take the bird home. He was worried that if he approached the bird, it would take to the air and disappear, but he knew that if he did nothing he would never be able to forget that he had lost the chance of capturing the most beautiful of all birds.

The man crept forward, taking care not to allow his foot-steps to be heard. There were twigs on the ground, and large stones, but he avoided these carefully and was soon only a short distance away from his quarry. Then, with a great jump, he flung himself on top of the bird and pinned it to the ground.

To the man's surprise, the bird did not struggle. As it lay beneath him, its wings and its body immobile, it merely looked up at him with its dark eves, and blinked.

The man took out his fruit bag and slipped the bird into it. Then, deciding not to bother to gather any more fruit, he turned round and made for home as quickly as he could. He could not wait to see the surprise of his children when they saw the marvellous bird which he had found.

When he arrived home, it was almost dark and the children had gone into their huts. The man sat at his wife's side and told her of the bird he had found.

"It is a most unusual bird," he explained. "There are many people who would like to have a bird like this one."

The woman asked him to open his bag, and he did so, making sure that the bird was unable to fly out of the open neck of the bag. The woman looked in and let out a cry of surprise.

"I have heard of that sort of bird before," she said. "That is the sort of bird which gives milk."

The man was most surprised that his wife should have heard of so unusual a bird, but he knew that her father had been a man who knew the names of all the birds and that she must have obtained her knowledge from him. Carefully reaching into the bag, he took the bird out and held it before his wife. She quickly fetched a calabash[3] and began to milk the bird. After only a few moments, the calabash was full with sweet-smelling milk, which the man and the woman both drank. Then they put the bird into a spare hut which they had and closed the door.

The next morning the woman went into the hut and, after waiting a few moments for her eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, she sought out the bird and milked it again. Then she took the calabash of milk to her children, who drank it all and asked for more.

"You may have more tonight," she said. "From now on, there will always be such milk for you."

The children were delighted with the fresh supply of such delicious milk. Every morning they drank their fill, and their parents finished off the rest. With all the milk they were getting, the children began to grow larger and better looking, and their skin shone with good health.

At the end of a month, the children began to be inquisitive about the source of the milk.

"I don't understand how we get such sweet milk from our cows," the girl said to her mother. "They have never given such milk before."

The woman smiled, and said nothing.

"Perhaps you have a secret cow somewhere," suggested the boy.

Once again the mother said nothing. She did not want to tell her children that what they were drinking was bird's milk, as she had heard from her father that children did not like to think they were drinking milk from birds. If they stopped drinking the milk, then they would surely lose all the fat which they had put on and which made them so much admired by everybody else in that place.

The girl went to her brother that evening and said that she had a plan. The next day, they would put a small bowl of the milk outside and wait to see which animals came to drink it. In this way they would know where the milk came from and their curiosity would be satisfied.

When their mother gave them the calabash the next day, the girl poured a little of the milk into a bowl and gave it to her brother. He slipped out of the hut and put the bowl down at the edge of the bush. Then the two of them watched, waiting for the first animal to drink the milk.

A hyena walked past, sniffed at the milk, but did not drink it. Then there came a baboon, who peered into the bowl, but did not touch the milk. The baboon was followed by a rock rabbit, which also showed no sign of wanting to drink the milk. At long last, a bird landed near the bowl, and soon had his beak dipped in the milk. After him there came more birds, until the bowl could not be seen for the fluttering of wings about it.

"That is bird's milk we have been drinking," the boy said. "Now we know."

The children were keen to see the bird from which their parents were obtaining the milk, and so they hid in a place where they could watch their mother as she came out of her hut in the morning. They both saw her go to the empty hut and look about her before she opened the door. Then they saw her come out again with the calabash in her hand and they knew immediately that the bird was being kept in that hut.

"We shall go and see the bird when our parents are in the fields," the boy said. "I have heard that birds which give milk are very colourful."

That afternoon, as the man and the woman were in the fields, the two children crept up to the bird's hut and opened the door. Once inside, they looked about nervously and it was a few minutes before they saw the bird sitting in his corner. The bird watched them suspiciously. He had grown used to the man and his wife, but the children were unfamiliar.

The children approached the bird and looked closely at him, while the bird stared back with its dark eyes, and blinked.

The boy looked at the bird's feathers and shook his head. "It is sad," he said. "The bird has lost all the colour from his feathers."

When it heard this, the bird looked down at his own feathers and sighed.

"It is because I have been kept in here for so long," the bird said to the boy. "I have not seen the sun for many weeks."

The boy shook his head.

"I am sorry," he said.

"If that is so," said the bird, "you should take me out into the sunshine for a few minutes. A short time in the open air would restore all the colours to my feathers."

The boy and the girl agreed to do this for the bird. Carefully they lifted him in their arms and took him out into the open. Then they set him down on a low branch of a tree and watched the colour return to his feathers. It happened quite quickly, and soon the bird was no longer faded.

"He is looking happier," the girl whispered to her brother. "His feathers are normal again."

"Thank you," said the bird. And with that, he flew up into the air and had soon disappeared. The girl looked at the boy and wailed.

"We shall never be forgiven," she said. "We shall never find a bird like that again."

The boy was frightened of telling his father what had happened, and so he went out into the hills to look for another bird which was exactly the same as the bird which had escaped. He searched in all the places he knew birds liked, but in none of these did he find a bird which looked at all similar. On his way home, though, he was surprised by a strange sound in the grass. There, sheltering behind a small bush, was a bird which looked almost the same as the milk bird. The boy seized the bird, which did not resist but just looked at him, and blinked.

That night the woman went to milk the bird in its special hut. After she had finished, she brought the calabash out and gave it to her husband. He raised it to his lips and took a sip.

"This is not milk," he said. "It is water. Why has our bird given us only water?"

The woman was unable to answer his question. She went back to the bird and tried again to milk it, but once more all that the bird gave was water. This made the woman wail, as she could think of no reason why the bird should suddenly have turned against them in this way.

The next day, while their parents sat under a tree and mourned the change in their bird, the two children crept out into the bush to see if they could find another bird that would give milk. They felt responsible for the loss of the first bird, and they knew that sooner or later they would have to confess to their parents what had really happened. They walked far, and eventually they came to a place where there was a group of boys calling out in excitement. They ran over to join the group of boys and saw that they had surrounded a bird and were throwing stones at it and calling it names.

The boy and his sister were angered at the cruelty of the boys. They seized two large sticks which were nearby and drove the other boys away, telling them that it was wrong to surround such a bird and torment it. Then they looked at the bird, which was lying on the ground, its breast trembling with fear. At once they knew it was the milk bird.

Gently, the boy lifted up the milk bird and carried it home. Without being seen by the parents, he took the bird into the hut and exchanged it for the water bird. The water bird then flew away, cackling with pleasure at its freedom.

The milk bird did not attempt to escape again. It was grateful to the boy and his sister and from that time on gave milk which was sweeter than ever before. The milk bird stayed alive until the boy and his sister had grown up and left that place. Then it fell to the floor of its dark hut, its heart broken with sorrow.

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[1] Flaschenkürbis, afrikanisches Trinkgefäss

[3] Flaschenkürbis, afrikanisches Trinkgefäss