This is my version of a public domain story: "The Little Hare" which is a Sotho story from Eugene Arnaud Casalis's The Basutos. See the PDF of the original; you will find musical transcriptions in the PDF for the song of the Rabbit. I have followed the original word by word while also feeling free to make my own changes and additions. The Sotho word "nyamatsane" refers to the bontebok antelope, but that is not made clear in the story; instead, the creature is presented as a formidable monster.
The Elephant, the Rabbit, and the Lion
People tell many stories about creatures called Niamatsane, mysterious monsters: there are many stories about the Niamatsane, but only a few have seen the creature and lived to tell the tale.
There was once a woman who desired to eat the liver of the Niamatsane, but when she told her husband this, he shouted at her, "You are insane! The flesh of that monster is not good to eat. What's more, no one can ever catch the Niamatsane because it can cover three days' journey in a single bound."
The woman, however, persisted, swearing that she would die if she did not eat the liver of the Niamatsane. Her husband, fearing for her life, went hunting. After many days, he saw a herd of Niamatsanes in the distance; even from far away, he could see them glowing like live coals in the darkness. He chased them day and night, until at last one day he found them fast asleep in the sunshine. The man approached, cast a powerful spell upon them to keep them sleeping, and then he killed the biggest Niamatsane of the herd, cutting out its liver to take home to his wife.
The woman devoured the liver with great pleasure, but then she felt a terrible burning fire in her stomach. "I'm on fire inside!" she shouted. "I need water, please. Give me water to drink!" But nothing could quench her thirst. She drank all the water in the house. She drained the well dry. She ran to a nearby lake and drank all the water in the lake. She was still burning inside! Then she ran to an even bigger lake, gulped down all the water there, and then lay stretched on the ground, unable to move.
The next day the Elephant, King of the Beasts, came to drink at the lake and saw that it was dry. He summoned the Rabbit, his messenger, and said to him, "Rabbit, you are my swiftest runner! I need you to run all the way around our great lake and see if you can discover who drank all my water."
The Rabbit set off as swift as the wind, and returned just as quickly. "O King," he said, "I found a woman on the other side of the lake who drank all the water," and then Rabbit repeated to the Elephant the woman's story.
With a loud trumpet, the Elephant assembled the animals — the Lion, the Hyena, the Leopard, the Rhino, the Buffalo, the various Antelopes — and all the animals, great and small, came to the council. They ran, they leaped, they danced about their King, making the desert ground shake. In a chorus they all repeated together, "The human dared to drink the water of our King! She drank the Elephant's water!"
The Elephant called the Hyena and said to him, "Hyena, you have the sharpest teeth! Go find the woman and pierce her stomach to release the water of the lake."
"Alas, O King, I cannot do that," replied the Hyena. "It is broad daylight, and you know that I do not attack people in plain sight like this."
Then the Elephant called the Lion and said to him, "Lion, you have the sharpest claws! Go find the woman and slash her stomach to release the water of the lake."
"Alas, O King, I cannot do that," replied the Lion. "The woman has not attacked me, and you know that I do not attack people unless they attack me first."
Meanwhile, the animals continued to run, leap and dance, making the desert ground shake even harder. In a chorus they all repeated together, "No one will bring back the water of our King! No one will bring back the Elephant's water!"
The Elephant then called the Ostrich and said to her, "Ostrich, you are able to kick more violently than any other animal. Go find this woman and kick her stomach to release the water of the lake."
The Ostrich raised no objections and quickly ran to where the woman was still lying on the ground beside the empty lake. As soon as he caught sight of her, the Ostrich turned, leaning to one side and spreading his wings to the wind, and then he turned again, raising a great cloud of dust. Confident the woman could not see him coming, the Ostrich then ran right up to her and gave her stomach a mighty kick. It worked! She vomited up all the water, sending a great fountain of water rising up into the air which then came crashing down in a torrent, filling up the lake.
All the animals again began to dance around their King, repeating, "The water of our King has come back to us! The Elephant's water has returned!"
"Let the water settle for three days," proclaimed the Elephant. "That is my royal command! Let no one drink from the lake today, tomorrow, or the next day. Then, on the fourth day, we shall drink."
The animals obeyed, and lay down to sleep for the night, not daring to touch the water of the lake until the appointed time.
The Rabbit, however, rose up in the night and drank from the lake. To put the blame on another animal, he took some mud and smeared it on the lips and the knees of the Jerboa that was sleeping at his side.
In the morning the animals saw that the water in the lake had gone down. Together they exclaimed, "Who dared to drink the water of our King? Who dared to drink the Elephant's water?"
"Look!" shouted the Rabbit. "Don't you see? The Jerboa did it! His knees are covered with mud because he kneeled down to reach the water, and he drank so much that the mud of the lake stuck to his lips."
All the animals rose up and danced around their King, saying, "The Jerboa must die! He drank the water of our King; he drank the Elephant's water."
So the Elephant condemned the Jerboa to death and he was executed.
The Rabbit then took the shin-bone of the Jerboa and made it into a flute. Then the Rabbit began to play and sing, "Tuh! Tuh! Tuh! I made a tiny flute from the tiny leg of the Jerboa! Look at the flute! Listen to my song! O Little Rabbit, how clever you are! O Jerboa, you were the Rabbit's fool, you were, you were the Rabbit's fool!"
The animals heard the Rabbit and realized that he had made fools of them all, so they set out in pursuit, but the Rabbit managed to escape and hide.
After a while the Rabbit emerged from his hiding place and went to see the Lion. "O Great One," the Rabbit said to the Lion, "you are looking very thin. Because the animals all fear you, they run when they see you, and it is very hard to catch them. If you make an alliance with me, I will make make it easy for you to capture the other animals."
"I believe you, Rabbit," said the Lion. "If you do what you promise, I will be your ally."
The Rabbit then told the Lion to clear a large patch of ground and to erect a strong fence all around it. Then he told the Lion to dig a large hole in the center of the enclosure.
When the Lion had accomplished these tasks, the Rabbit said, "Now you get in the hole. I'll fill in the first around you so that only your jaw will be sticking out. Keep your mouth open so that your teeth will be clearly visible."
Again, the Lion did exactly what the Rabbit commanded, and the Rabbit filled the hole with dirt all around the Lion. Then the Rabbit went into the desert and called, "Animals! All you animals! Come and see! It's a miracle! There is a jaw that has grown up from out of the earth!"
The animals came rushing from all directions to see this prodigy. First came the Gnus, who ran into the enclosure, tossing their heads and shouting, "Oh yes! It's a miracle! There are teeth growing up out of the earth!” Then came the Quaggas, who are even more foolish than the Gnus, and they began to shout, "A miracle! A prodigy!" Then even the timid Antelopes entered the enclosure wanting to see the teeth that were growing out of the ground.
The Monkey also came, carrying his son on his back. He ran straight to the hole and gently moved away some of the dirt around the teeth, whereupon he noticed the gleam of the Lion's eye. "What is this thing?" he shrieked. "Son, hold on; we must run away from this danger as quickly as we can." And so the Monkey ran and leaped over the fence, making his escape.
Before the other animals could react, the Rabbit slammed the gate to the fence shut. "Now, Lion!" he shouted.
And with a roar, the Lion rose up, shaking dirt in all directions, and he slaughtered the Gnus and Quaggas and Antelope, all the foolish animals who had come to see the prodigy of the teeth that grew from the ground.
This alliance of the Rabbit and the Lion did not last long, however. Because he was the stronger of the two, the Lion continually abused the Rabbit, and the Rabbit vowed that he would be avenged.
"O Great One," the Rabbit said sweetly to the Lion, "I notice that we both suffer from the rain and from the hail. I think we should build a hut where we can take shelter."
"If you want to build a hut, build it!" said the Lion, yawning. "But as for myself, I'm going to take a nap." The Lion then curled up and went to sleep.
The Rabbit then gathered stakes and reeds and began building the hut. As he worked, he wove the Lion's tail into the walls of the hut. As the hut took shape around the sleeping Lion, the Rabbit smiled to himself, knowing that the hut would soon become the Lion's cage, a cage from which he would never escape.
When the Lion awoke, he roared with rage. "What have you done, Rabbit? Get me out of here!"
The Rabbit listened to the Lion's words, but he said nothing.
"I'm hungry, Rabbit!" roared the Lion. "I'm thirsty! Help me!"
The the Rabbit did not come to the Lion's aid. Instead, the Rabbit just waited.
Day after day, the Lion's roars grew weaker and weaker, until finally the Lion roared no more.
The Lion was dead.
The Rabbit then went to the hut and stripped off the Lion's skin. Next, he sewed the Lion's skin into a disguise that he could wear: the Rabbit now looked exactly like the Lion, and he roared, "Feed me, you animals! Feed me, or else I will feed on you!"
The animals rushed to appease the Lion's demands, kneeling before him and offering him food and drink. "Please accept our humble offerings," they said, and the Rabbit smiled inside his disguise, eating the food and drinking the drinks that the animals offered.
In time, the Rabbit because so confident in his powers that he set aside the disguise and roared, "Feed me, you animals! Feed me, or else I will feed on you! I am the Rabbit, the Great One, the Mighty!"
When the animals saw it was Rabbit, they joined together to attack him. "That's Rabbit!" they shouted. "The murderer of the Jerboa! The inventor of the teeth in the ground! The servant who made his master die of thirst and starvation! The Rabbit now deserves to die!"
The Rabbit ran, but the animals did not stop chasing him. Finally, in order to secure some small peace and quiet, the Rabbit resorted to cutting off one of his own ears. "I am not the Rabbit you seek," he insisted. "Look! One ear, one ear only!" So the animals searched for the Rabbit elsewhere, while the Rabbit lived forever with the shame of having only one ear.
The Rabbit's Song
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