THERE WAS ONCE an old woman who had no husband, and she lived for many days in trouble. One day she said to herself, “Why do I always feel so troubled? It is because I have neither children nor husband. I shall go to the medicine-man and get some children.
She went to the medicine-man and told him she was unhappy owing to the fact that although she had now grown old, she had neither husband nor children. The medicine-man asked her which she wanted, husband or children, and she told him she wanted children.
She was instructed to take some cooking pots – three, or as many as she could carry – and to search for a fruit-bearing sycamore tree, to fill the pots with the fruit, to put them in her hut, and to go for a walk.
The old woman followed these instructions carefully. She gathered the fruit, filled the pots, placed them in her hut, and went for a walk until the evening.
On arriving near the kraal, she heard the sound of voices and asked herself, “Why does one hear the voices of children in the kraal?” She went nearer, and found her hut filled with children, all her work finished, the boys herding the cattle, the hut swept, by the girls, the warriors singing and dancing on the common, and the little children waiting to greet her. She thus became a rich old woman, and lived happily with her children for many days.
One day, however, she scolded the children, and reproached them for being children of the tree. They remained silent and did not speak to her; then, while she went to visit her friends in the other kraals, the children returned to the sycamore tree, and became fruit again. On her return to her own kraal, the old woman wept bitterly when she found it empty, and paid another visit to the medicine-man, whom she taxed with having spirited away her children.
The medicine-man told her that he did not know what she should do now, and when she proposed to go and look at the sycamore tree, he recommended her to try.
She took her cooking pots to the sycamore tree and climbed up into it. But when she reached the fruit they all put forth eyes and stared at her. This so startled her that she was unable to descend, and her friends had to come and help her down.
She did not go to the sycamore tree again to search for the children.
[ MASAI ]