The Mother, Her Daughter, and the Melon
There was once a young woman who lived with her mother. "Go harvest a melon," her mother said to her one day, and so she went into their melon-field and harvested a melon.
This young woman had some admirers. When they heard her mother tell her to go to the melon-field, they waited on the roadside for her to return. When she came near them they praised her beauty. Because the men's words pleased her, she gave them the melon and returned home empty-handed.
When she told her mother what had happened, her mother was furious. "You wretched daughter!" the mother shouted. "I curse you and your green eyes, as green s those of a crocodile."
While her mother yelled at her, the woman raised her eyes to heaven and sang to her favorite star in the sky:
Star, little star!
My admirers waited for me there by the roadside.
I took the fruit and gave it them.
Star, little star!
My mother waited for me here at home.
I had no fruit to give, so she curses me.
She says I have green eyes,
As green as those of the crocodile.
Oh, my star, my little star!”
This song made the mother even more angry, she beat her poor daughter to death. Then she ground her body into powder, which she threw away into the desert land.
The winds of the desert then arose and carried away the dust, casting it into a lake.
A crocodile collected the dust and used that dust to fashion a beautiful woman who lived with him at the bottom of the lake.
From time to time, the woman rose to the surface of the lake, calling to her sister, singing the story to her her misfortunes in a plaintive voice:
Your mother, O my sister,
Ground me into dust and cast me to the winds;
The crocodile gathered up my dust.
The crocodile gave me a human form again;
The crocodile has made me what I am.
Here is the musical transcription from the story PDF:
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