Page:Folklore1919.djvu/595

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Thirty-Two Folk-Tales of Nigeria.
229

you took her head, she was vexed; that was why she lay down.”

xxxi.

God said that people should not die, and an old woman died in Imiakebu; she was an ẹnabọ wife, so they took her to Igiga, and the people saw them cry and asked what was the matter. So they said crying was sweet. So they told them to buy the body; and when they bought it; they began to die.

(For the ẹnabọ wife see Ẹdo Report, i. 57; she cannot be buried by her husband’s people unless she is purchased, and thus becomes an amọya wife).

xxxii.

A man had a wife and they had seven sons; so they tried ifa (divination) and were told if they wanted a daughter to get a cow and kill it far away where there were no people and eat it there. So they went with the seven sons; but they forgot fire; so when the man killed the cow he looked for the matches and found none. Then Enyagbolimi (a fabulous animal) came and knocked his head on the ground; now his rump was red, so the seventh child said: “There is fire,” and took a piece of bark to get fire from Enyagbolimi; and E. asked why it came and it explained. So the child told him to come to his father. Then the father explained that he had brought a cow to kill, but the land was not his, So he had called E. to whom it belonged. Then he shared the meat with E., who put it in his bag and told the father he had not said why he had called him. So the father said: “If you want all the meat, take it and put it in the second bag.” Then E. asked again and was told to take one of the sons and make soup of him. So he took the boy and asked again. Finally he took all the seven sons and the father and mother.

At home E. had seven children; he hung up the bags