The Lion Who Became a Woman
Some mothers and their daughters went out to seek herbs to use for cooking food. On their way home the mothers sat down and said to their daughters, "We must taste the herbs you have gathered." Each daughter offered her mother herbs from their baskets, herbs were all good, except for what one young woman had gathered. "Those herbs are no good for cooking!" her mother told her, and the other women agreed. "Empty your basket," the other women told her, "and go back to find herbs that taste good."
So the young woman threw away what she had gathered and went back to find the herbs that were good for cooking.
After she filled her basket a second time, she went back to rejoin her mother and the other women, but they were gone, and she could not find them. Not sure what to do, she went down to the river, and there she saw the the Rabbit drinking water from a cup. "Please, Rabbit," she said, "give me some water to drink. I'm thirsty!"
"No!" said the Rabbit. "This cup belongs to me and to my Uncle Lion. Only he and I may drink from this cup."
"But I am so thirsty," the woman replied. "Please, Rabbit, give me some water to drink."
Again the Rabbit refused.
Then the woman grabbed the cup and drank from it.
"You'll be sorry!' shouted the Rabbit, and he ran home to tell his uncle the Lion what the woman had done.
The woman was not frightened by the Rabbit's words, and continued drinking water from the cup until she had quenched her thirst. Then she put the cup down and began the long walk back to her village.
After learning from the Rabbit what the woman had done, the Lion came running down to the river. He then sniffed out the woman's trail and chased her. When she turned around and saw the Lion coming after her, the woman sang this song:
My mother, she would not eat my herbs,
Herbs of the field, food from the field.
Hoo-hoo-hoooooo!
When the Lion at last caught up with the woman, they chased each other around a shrub. When he saw that the woman was wearing many beads and bracelets, the Lion said, "Let me try on your beads! Let me try on your bracelets!"
The woman gave to loan her beads and bracelets to the Lion, but afterwards he refused to give them back. So they chased each other around the shrub again until the Lion fell down. The woman jumped on him and pinned him to the earth.
Groaning, the Lion sang out the words of a magical spell:
Aunt, oh my Aunt! It is morning, and time to rise;
Pray, rise from me, Aunt, oh my Aunt!
The woman then rose from the Lion, and again they chased each other around the shrub, until the woman fell down, and the Lion jumped on her, pinning her to the earth.
Groaning, the woman also sang out the words of a magical spell:
Uncle, oh my Uncle! It is morning, and time to rise;
Pray, rise from me, Uncle, oh my Uncle!
The spell compelled him to rise and again they chased each other until the Lion fell down a second time. When the woman pinned him, the Lion sang again:
Aunt, oh my Aunt! It is morning, and time to rise;
Pray, rise from me, Aunt, oh my Aunt!
They rose again and hunted after each other. The woman fell down a second time, the Lion pinned her, and she sang:
Uncle, oh my Uncle! It is morning, and time to rise;
Pray, rise from me, Uncle, oh my Uncle!
But this time the Lion replied:
Hey! Is it morning?
Ha! Is it morning, and time to rise?
Then the Lion ate the woman, being careful to leave her skin intact. Then he took the skin and put it on, and then he put on her dress and her beads and her bracelets, so that the Lion looked just like a woman, and then he went to her family's homestead.
When this counterfeit-woman arrived, her little sister saw her and cried out, "My sister, pour me some milk in my little cup."
But the woman replied, "My sister, I will not pour you any milk."
Then the little girl went to their mother and said, "Mama, pour me some milk in my little cup!"
The mother replied, "Go to your sister, and let her pour the milk for you."
So the little girl went back to her sister and said, "My sister, pour me some milk."
Again, the counterfeit-woman refused. "No," she told her sister, "I will not."
Then the mother said to the little girl, "I sent your sister alone to gather herbs, and I'm not sure what might have happened to her out there. Go to the Rabbit. He will pour you some milk."
The girl went to the Rabbit who poured milk for her in her little cup. Then, when her sister saw the cup of milk, she said, "You have milk! Come and share it with me."
The little child then went to her sister, offering her the cup of milk, they both drank from the cup.
As they were doing this, some milk splashed on the little girl's hand, and the counterfeit-woman licked up the milk with her tongue, the roughness of her tongue, which was a lion's tongue, drew blood. Then she eagerly licked up the blood too.
Crying, the little girl went to her mother and said, "Mother, my sister's tongue scraped my skin so that I was bleeding, and then she drank the blood."
"Your sister is acting like a lion," said the mother, "but I do not know how that happened. She went away and then came back with the spirit of a lion inside her."
Then the cowherds brought in the cows for the evening, and the counterfeit-woman cleaned the pails, preparing to milk the cows as she did every day. But when she approached the cows with a rope to tie them, the cows refused to let her near them.
The Rabbit asked, "Why can't you get near the cows?"
"Leave me alone!" she shouted at the Rabbit. "You do what you want; just leave me alone."
Then the husband of the counterfeit-woman asked his mother-in-law, "What has come over your daughter that the cows refuse to go near her? These are the same cows she always milks."
"I do not know," the mother answered. "Something happened today. She has come home like a lion, and not like my daughter."
The counterfeit-woman then said to her mother, "I cannot milk the cows," and having said this, she sat down.
Then the mother said to the Rabbit, "Bring me the buckets and I will milk the cows. I do not know what is wrong with my daughter."
So the mother herself milked the cows, and when she had done so, the Rabbit brought the buckets to the counterfeit-woman's house. The woman took the milk from him, but she would not give her husband anything to eat.
When night came, she lay down to sleep, and then her husband saw some of the Lion's fur which had slipped out from under the woman's skin that the Lion was wearing. "Oh, this is why the cows would not go near her!" the husband said to himself. Then he brought his mother-in-law to see what he had seen, and then she then told everyone what to do.
"We must remove the hut here without waking the Lion," she said, and so they used magic.
When they took away the mat walls of the hut, they sang:
Mats, oh Mats, do us this favor:
come away making the noise-that-is-no-noise.
Likewise when they took down the poles, they sang:
Poles, oh Poles, do us this favor:
come away making the noise-that-is-no-noise.
Then when they rolled up the bed-skins, they sang:
Bed-skins, oh Bed-skins, do us this favor:
come away making the noise-that-is-no-noise.
In this way the people removed the hut and all its contents, leaving the Lion there on the ground, still sleeping.
Next they took handfuls of grass, put the grass around the Lion, and then lit the grass on fire, singing:
Fire, oh Fire, do us this favor:
Flare up and subside before you burn the heart!
Do not burn the heart, oh Fire!
So the fire flared up around the Lion but did not burn the heart inside him. Feeling the heat of the flames, the woman's heart jumped out, falling onto the ground, and the woman's mother reached out and grabbed the heart, putting it inside a calabash.
As the fire burned hotter and hotter, the Lion shrieked from inside the flames, "I ate your daughter! She was delicious! I ate her all up!"
Then the mother shouted back at the Lion, "I lit a fire! It's burning hot! The fire will burn you all up!"
When the fire died down, there was nothing but ashes left of the Lion. The Rabbit came and took the ashes; no one knows what he did with them.
Meanwhile, the mother nursed her daughter's heart inside the calabash. Each time a cow gave birth to a calf, she took the cow's first milk and poured it into the calabash. The calabash grew bigger and bigger as the woman's daughter grew again inside it.
One day, when the mother went out to fetch wood, she said to the Rabbit, "By the time that I come back, I expect you to have have everything in the hut here nice and clean."
But during her mother's absence, the girl emerged from the calabash and cleaned everything in the hut, putting it all in order just as she knew her mother liked it. Then she told the Rabbit, "When mother comes back and asks who cleaned the hut, you must say: I, Rabbit, I cleaned the hut."
After that, she hid herself in the hut where no one could see her.
When the mother came home, she said, "Rabbit, who cleaned the hut? Everything has been done just as my daughter used to do it."
"I, Rabbit, I cleaned the hut!" replied the Rabbit.
But the mother didn't believe him. She looked in the calabash: it was empty! Then she knew her daughter must be somewhere there in the hut. She looked and looked until at last she found her.
"My daughter!" she exclaimed, and she hugged her daughter and kissed her. From then on, the woman stayed always with her mother, and she did everything that she used to do, although she remained unmarried; the woman who had become a lion did not return to her husband again after that.
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