A very long time ago there was a king who called Walukaga, chief of the smiths, and gave him a great quantity of iron and said, “I want you to make a real man for me, one who can walk and talk, and who has blood in his body, and who has brains.”

Walukaga took the iron and went home, but he was at a loss what to do, and no one could advise him how to set about making the real man. He went about among his friends telling them what the king has said, and asked what he had better do. No one was able to give him any advice. They all knew that the king would not accept anything short of an honest trial, and would punish the man for not carrying out his commands.

On the way home one day Walukaga net a former friend who had gone mad, and who lived alone on some wasteland. Walukaga did not know that he was mad until he met him. When they approached each other, Walukaga greeted his old friend, and the madman asked him where he had come from. Walukaga reasoned for a moment and then said to himself, “Why should I not tell him my story? Even though he is mad, he used to be my friend.” So he answered, “I have come from some friends where I have been trying to get advice.”

The madman asked what advice he wanted, and Walukaga told him all the king had said, and about the work he had given him to do, and how he had given him the iron, and then added, “What am I to do?”

The madman answered, “If the king has told you to do this work, go to him and say that, if he really wishes to have a nice man forged, he is to order all the people to share their heads and burn the hair until they have made up a thousand loads of charcoal, and he is to get one hundred large pots of water from the tears of the people with which to slake the fire and keep it from burning too fiercely.”

Walukaga returned to the king and said to him, “My lord, if you wish me to make this man quickly and well, order the people to shave their heads and burn their hair, and make a thousand loads of charcoal out of it for me to work the iron into the man. Further, make them collect a hundred pots full of tears to act as water for the work, because the charcoal from wood and the ordinary water from wells are of no use for forging a man.”

The king agreed to the request and gave the order to all the people to shave their heads and burn their hair into charcoal, and to collect all the tears. When they had all shaved their heads and burnt their hair, there was scarcely one load of charcoal, and when they had collected all the tears there were not two pots full of water.

When the king saw the results of his endeavors, he sent for the smith Walukaga and said to him, “Don’t trouble to make the man, because I am unable to get the charcoal or the tears for the water.”

Walukaga knelt down and thanked the king. He then added, “My lord, it was because I knew you would be unable to get the hair for charcoal and the tears for the water that I asked for them; you had asked me to do an impossible thing.”

All the people present laughed and said, “Walukaga speaks the truth.”

[ BAGANDA ]