it is the weasel who is the wisest of beasts, and who, having got some meat in common with the hyæna, put it into a hole, and said,—
"'Behold two men came out of the forest, took the meat, and put it into a hole: stop, I will go into the hole, and then thou mayst stretch out thy tail to me, and I will tie the meat to thy tail for thee to draw it out.' So the weasel went into the hole, the hyæna stretched its tail out to it, but the weasel took the hyæna's tail, fastened a stick, and tied the hyæna's tail to the stick, and then said to the hyæna, 'I have tied the meat to thy tail; draw, and pull it out.' The hyæna was a fool, it did not know the weasel surpassed it in subtlety; it thought the meat was tied; but when it tried to draw out its tail, it was fast. When the weasel said again to it, 'Pull,' it pulled, but could not draw it out; so it became vexed, and on pulling with force, its tail broke. The tail being torn out, the weasel was no more seen by the hyæna: the weasel was hidden in the hole with its meat, and the hyæna saw it not."[1]
Here we have a fact in natural history accounted for, but accounted for in such a peculiar way as shews that the races among which they are current must have derived them from some common tradition. The mode by which the tail is lost is different indeed; but the manner in which the common ground-work is suited in one case to the cold of the North, and the way in which fish are commonly caught at holes in the ice as they rise to breathe; and in the other to Africa and her pit-falls for wild beasts, is only another proof of the oldness of the tradition, and that it is not merely a copy.
- ↑ Kanuri Proverbs, p. 167.
