Somalian
The Hyena, the Fox and the Monkey
In the old days the hyena and the fox lived together. One day they quarrelled, so they went to the monkey and asked her to judge the quarrel.
“The fox has called me a thief,” said the hyena.
The fox tried to give the monkey a present to bribe her.
The monkey said, “Before you start presenting your cases, you have to have someone to pay bail for you.”
The hyena said, “I want my guarantor to be the fox,” and the fox said he wanted the hyena.
So the monkey looked at them thoughtfully and said, “You are both wrong because since you have chosen each other to be guarantor I see no reason to judge you. You have pretended that you fought over something when in fact there’s no quarrel between you. If it was another judge presiding over this case, he would have charged you a lot of money for your foolishness. But because I am a close friend of you both, I will only charge you five birr1 each.”
Abba Bukkush
A long time ago, there lived a person called Abba Bukkush. He was a jolly fellow. He used to make the king laugh very much, so the king called him Abba Bukkush, which means ‘Father of Laughter’. Abba Bukkush always sat beside the king.
Then one day he said to his friend, “The king is a very good man but when one man called Afewerke made mistakes, the king didn’t punish him. He should have given him some sort of punishment.”
Abba Bukkush’s friend went to the king and told him what Abba Bukkush said.
Then the king said, “Aha, so he has started to show disrespect for me,” and he was very angry with Abba Bukkush.
He ordered three of his soldiers to go to Abba Bukkush’s house and shit on his mattress.
So the soldiers went to Abba Bukkush’s house and said, “We have been ordered to shit on your mattress.”
So they brought the mattress out of the house and started to prepare themselves to shit.
At this time Abba Bukkush brought a big stick and said, “The king has only ordered you to shit on my mattress but he has not ordered you to pee. So if I see a drop of pee on my mattress I will beat your heads with this stick.”
The soldiers were confused and frightened since they couldn’t do one without the other, so they went back to the king and told him the story.
So the king was amazed and began to laugh and ordered his soldiers to take him some gifts.
The Fox and the Scales
A long time ago there lived two monkeys together. One day they went out to search for food and found something to eat. They began to quarrel over the food.
They said, “Let us go to the fox and let him judge us,” and they went to the fox.
The fox, after hearing the case, said, “I will have to use the scales so that I can divide the food into two equal pieces. Unfortunately I don’t have the scales with me now. I have lent it to the lion this morning. Let us go to the lion and divide the food.”
So they went to the lion’s cave. At the mouth of the cave, the fox called out to the lion and told him the story.
He said, “Lion, make peace between the monkeys.”
But then the fox went back without entering the cave, and he picked up the food the monkeys had found and ate it himself. Meanwhile, the two monkeys began to tell their stories to the lion. But the lion had no intention of judging their quarrel. He wanted to eat them, so he ate them.
The Bride’s Test
Once upon a time there was a boy who wanted to elope with a girl. He loved her and she was willing to go with him, but her parents would not accept the marriage. So the boy took a friend as a companion and they set out at night to go to the place where they could be married.
They walked the whole night and in the morning she said, “Let us have breakfast.”
Now there was nothing to eat. Her fiancé didn’t understand her.
“Why? You know there’s nothing here to eat,” he said.
But the best man understood her meaning, and said, “No, the lady means we have to brush our teeth, which is a kind of breakfast. We have nothing to eat.”
“Really?” the young man said to his fiancée. “Is that what you meant?”
“Yes of course it was,” she said impatiently.
This was her first test.
So they went on, but at midday they were very tired.
She said, “We’re tired. Let’s rest.”
So they all sat under a tree. The girl and the best man took their shoes off, but the young man kept his shoes on.
“Take a rest!” the girl said.
“But I am resting!” the young man said.
“How stupid he is,” thought the girl, “How can he rest with shoes on his feet?”
The best man said, “The lady means take your shoes off, because you can’t rest properly with them on.”
The third test happened when they arrived at a village, where the people invited them to eat meat with them.
When they had eaten, the girl said, “Let’s pull out the remaining meat.”
“What? What do you mean?” the fiancé said.
“Oh,” thought the girl. “How stupid this man is.”
But she said nothing.
Then the best man picked a twig and began to pick his teeth.
“This is what she means,” the best man said.
“Oh really?” said the young man. “Is that what you mean? I didn’t understand.”
“You don’t understand anything,” the young woman said.
At last they came to the house where the sheikh was ready to marry them. But the girl refused.
“I don’t like this man,” she said. “I want to marry his friend, if he will marry me.”
The moral of the story is, always choose a best man who is less clever, less handsome and less rich than yourself.
Hirsi and Kabaalaf
Once there were two thieves, one called Hirsi and the other called Kabaalaf. They lived in adjacent towns and were both famous in their own town. Each one knew of the other.
One day each of them tried to go to the other town to cheat people. One took a sack of ash on his horse to sell as flour, and the other took a sack of goat’s dung, to sell it as coffee. On the way they met.
“Oh, how are you?”
“Are you well?”
“Are you on your way to market?”
“Yes.”
“What do you have?”
“A sack of flour.”
“That’s funny. A sack of flour is just what I want. I have a sack of coffee.”
“That’s amazing! Coffee is what I want. We don’t need to go all the way to the market. Aren’t we lucky! Let’s just swap.”
When they get home, they both took their sacks to the market to sell the contents. Then they each realised they’d been cheated.
This shows that cheats will be cheated in their turn.
Part 2
One day Hirsi and Kabaalaf met and planned a con trick. They noticed a woman with a pot of butter on her head, pulling a ram with a rope. Both her hands were busy.
One went ahead of her and sat down, pretending to be blind and began to plead, “Is there anyone here who can guide me where I want to go?”
“Oh, the poor blind man,” the woman said, and she came up to him and said, “Oh, I’m sorry for you. You are blind. I would like to help you but both my hands are full, one with the rope and ram, and the other with the jar of butter. So I can’t help you.”
“Oh, but you can,” the thief said. “Give me the rope and I’ll pull the ram. Then take my stick with that hand and guide me where I want to go.”
“That’s a good idea,” she said, and she took his stick and gave him his rope.
After a while the other thief, following, took the rope off the ram’s neck and took it.
The pseudo blind man said, “Oh, the rope is light now. What happened?”
The woman looked back and saw that her ram had gone.
“Oh, I didn’t feel anything. Just that the rope became very light.”
“What shall we do now?” the woman said.
“Why don’t you go back and look for the ram and I’ll look after your butter for you?” the thief said.
So she agreed and went to find the ram, and the thief ran off with the butter.
Then the two thieves met in the bush with the ram and butter. They ate them, but they both fell very seriously ill.
“What happened to you?” everyone said.
“Oh, we’ve done a bad thing. We took a ram and a pot of butter from a woman going to market. Maybe she has children who are hungry. We are very sorry that now we are about to die.”
The moral is that even if you are not punished by man, God will punish you.
The Clever Woman and the Sheikh Who Makes Mistakes
Once there was a sheikh who was drawing water up from the well for the village people. One of the village women he loved, but she was married.
When she sent her son to the well, he said, “No, you can’t take the water. You’re too small. Send your mother to fetch the water.”
So at last, she came. Then he started to flatter her cleverness and beauty. At last she fell in love with him, but she didn’t tell anyone how she felt, and grew silent and thoughtful. She just walked back to her house.
She decided to discuss it with her husband.
She said, “I think this man likes me, and he wants me to agree to meet him secretly. I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to tell you so that we can get out of this problem without a fight or a scandal, since I am a married lady. We must discourage him, but how?”
So they talked for a long time, and they decided she must go outside and tell him the husband has gone away and she can be with him all evening and all night. Then, as soon as the sheikh has come, her husband must come home and will knock at the door, which she will have locked. At once the wife will dress the sheikh in women’s clothes to pretend he is a woman.
So the woman went to the well to get water. As soon as he saw her the sheikh begged her to meet him alone.
She’d never answered him before, but this time she said, “A great person has many eyes, which means he can understand everything. So I have understood what you want. I was silent up to now because my husband was present, but now he’s gone away. Now’s our chance. Come to me, and we can talk and do whatever we like.”
The sheikh was very happy and excited.
“When can I come?” he said.
“Come as soon as you’ve said your evening prayers,” she said.
He agreed at once, but then he grew thoughtful.
“What can I say to my wife?” he thought. “I never go out in the evening. I must give her a good reason or she will suspect something.”
At last he decided to tell his wife he would be out till ten o’clock that evening.
“Why?” said his wife. “This is extraordinary. You never go out at night.”
But he said, “There’s a verse in the Koran which is very hard to translate, and since I’m a sheikh, people have called me to a meeting to explain it to them.”
“Oh, that’s good,” she said. “If it’s about religion, of course you must go.”
So off he went to the woman’s house. As soon as he entered, she put down the beautiful mat and gave him tea. Before he had finished his tea, she locked the door.
As she had agreed with her husband, as soon as she locked the door, he knocked and shouted, “Wife! Wife! I couldn’t get a bus, so I’ve come back.”
As soon as the sheikh heard that the husband had been unable to leave, he was shocked.
The wife whispered, “We’re in trouble. My husband has come back.”
“What shall we do?” he said.
“I know,” she said. “Put on my dress and I’ll hide you. So if he asks who’s talking, I’ll say it’s a housemaid I have.”
So she gave him the dress and he put it on and she opened the door. And she wrapped her scarf round her face and pretended to be very shy.
The husband came in and said, “Wife, I have brought you some maize, a sack of it.”
“Oh, how lovely!” said the wife.
“You’re lucky,” the husband said, “that the housemaid is here because the maize has not been pounded, and there is so much of it. Bring the mortar and pestle and let her start pounding.”
So the sheikh started to pound. The man sat close beside him and the sheikh had to keep his back turned and go on pounding. He had to go on and on, and pound the maize.
“Why won’t this husband go away?” he said. “I’m so tired of pounding all this maize.”
He went on and on until all the maize was pounded and, as soon as he had finished, the wife said, “Well done, you’ve done well. You can go.”
So the sheikh rushed home, but he was still in a woman’s dress. His wife was shocked.
“Oh! You are wearing a woman’s dress. You know the Koran says that for a man to wear a woman’s dress is a great sin.”
“Oh, I couldn’t help it,” the sheikh said. “We were discussing the verse in the Koran which calls Satan the evil one, and he came himself. At once he began to beat everyone, and luckily there was a woman’s dress near me and I put it on, and even Satan would be ashamed to beat a woman, so he let me run away.”
“Oh,” the wife said, “then you did very well to escape, even if you had to wear a woman’s dress.”
The next day, at the well, the woman came to the sheikh again and said, “My husband is going away tonight. I’m sure he will have gone, so come to my house.”
“Oh no,” said the sheikh. “I don’t want to pound maize all evening. If I want to do that, I have plenty of maize at home.”
The Handsome Boy’s Dream
Once there was a boy who was very handsome, but he was very poor and worked as a porter. Sometimes he had food and some days he had nothing to eat. One day, when he was very hungry, he was working in a store, carrying the goods, and he begged for some money to buy food.
The storekeeper said, “You’re so handsome, you don’t need to work like this. I wish I could buy your good looks. You could use your good looks to get money from women.”
“What? Is that possible?” said the boy.
“Of course it is,” said the storekeeper.
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Anyway, will you give me money for food?”
“No. Find a woman who is rich and spend the night with her and get money like that.”
“Are you really encouraging me to do such things?”
“Yes. Help yourself as best you can, but don’t beg like this.”
So that afternoon, the storeman’s wife called, “Porter! Porter!”
And the boy came with his barrow.
The wife said, “Take these goods to my house.”
The boy did so, and as soon as he brought them to her house she said, “You are a handsome boy and I like you. Come this evening and I will give you some money.”
Then the boy went back to the storeman and said, “You were right. This very afternoon a woman called, ‘Porter!’ and when I went to her house she gave me money and told me to come back in the evening.”
“Who was this woman? Where’s her house?” said the storeman.
The boy told him, and the storeman realised that the woman was his wife, but he didn’t say anything.
“Do as she says,” he told him. “Go to her house.”
So the boy went. The woman was ironing clothes. But as soon as the boy had gone in, the husband knocked on the door. At once the woman hid the boy under the box on which she was ironing and she opened the door. The husband, suspecting the boy was there, hunted everywhere but he couldn’t find him.
“Someone’s here! Someone’s here!”
But he couldn’t find him. At last he went out and the boy came out from under the box and ran away.
Early the next day the storeman called the boy and said, “Did you go to that house like you said you would?”
“Yes,” said the boy, “but as soon as I went in, before I had the chance to do anything, the husband knocked. At once she hid me under the box on which she was ironing. Her husband hunted and hunted, but he couldn’t find me, and as soon as he’d gone I came out and ran away.”
“Are you going again?”
“Yes.”
And the boy told him when.
The same thing happened again but this time the wife hid him in the barrel of water, and on top of it she put the tub in which she was washing the clothes. Then she opened the door and the husband hunted and hunted, but couldn’t find the boy.
And the woman called all her neighbours and said, “My husband’s gone mad. He did this last night and now he’s doing it again.”
No one found the boy and at last the husband went away and the boy jumped out of the barrel and escaped.
In the morning he saw the boy.
“Did you go there?”
“Yes, and the husband came and she shouted to all the neighbours and there was a terrible quarrel, but I was hiding in the water barrel.”
“Are you going tonight?”
“Yes.”
So the boy went again, and this time he was hidden in her mother’s clothes box. The man hunted everywhere but he couldn’t open his mother-in-law’s box.
“I’ll burn the whole house down,” he said.
His wife said, “Go ahead and burn the house down. It’s yours. But you may not burn my mother’s box.”
“Let me open it and look inside.”
“No, the keys are with my mother.”
“I’ll break it open then.”
“Break it? Of course you can’t break it.”
So he went out, and the boy escaped.
In the morning the man asked the boy, “Did you go last night?”
“Yes. I was in the box, and they were quarrelling and all the neighbours came, and he said he would burn the house.”
“Are you going tonight?”
“No. The woman was angry and she left her husband and she’s gone to her parents’ house saying, ‘ I cannot live with this man.’”
The storekeeper said, “Come with me. I have a job for you.”
So the storekeeper took the boy to his wife’s mother’s house to bring back his wife. The boy waited outside and began talking to the people there. He told them all the amazing things that had been happening to him up to where he was in the box. Then the woman came out of the house and he looked up and saw her. And she knew he was talking about her, and she gave him a sign.
And as soon as he saw her, he understood, and at once he said, “As soon as she shut me in the box, I woke up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was dreaming!”
“Really? Is it possible to dream all these things?” they said.
“Yes.”
So they went to the man, and said, “Listen, this boy has told us everything and it was all a dream. How could you take it so seriously? You are a mad man.”
How the Cat Became the Woman’s Friend
At the beginning of the world, the cat was the friend of the antelope in the bush. But once the lion came to the bush and fought and killed the antelope. So the cat thought the lion was better, and became a friend of the lion. But then a group of elephants fought the lion and the lion was killed, so she became the friend of the elephants. Then she saw a man kill an elephant.
“Oh, this is better than the elephant,” and she became the friend of man.
As soon as the man went into his house there was a quarrel with his wife, and his wife ran at him with a stick, shouting, “Where have you been?”
And she shouted many bad things to him. So the man ran away.
“Oh,” said the cat, “the woman is stronger than the man.”
So she became the friend of the woman.