Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/326

 286 he could have done it under the circumstances), and could not get up again. The people now came up and found him a prisoner. They went to fetch the Muna Mugunda, who loosed him from the gum and carried him off to the village. The culprit, however, had thought of a way of escape. "You man! (obe mugosha) don't kill me, but boil me alive in the pot; I shall boil quickly. If you kill me first, I shall not boil quickly, I shall be hard like a stone." The man listened to his words, and put him into the pot. (As it was still early, we may presume that the water had only just been put on, and was therefore cold.) Then the people all went away to hoe their gardens. At this village, there was a child ill with manoro (a skin disease), and they left him to watch the pot. As soon as they were gone, the Rabbit came out of the pot, seized the boy set to watch, put him in, and then assumed his shape, manoro and all. When the people came back, he said: "Your meat is ready; cook me a mess of bran-porridge (shihere; in Yao, chipere). I do not want any of your meat, it smells bad." The boy's mother made him some shihere, and he went outside to eat it muhumbo—under the eaves by the door. They called him to come and sit beside them, but he refused. When he saw them picking the bones, he muttered: "You are gnawing the bones of your own child." They said: "What do you say, child?" He said: "I only said the flies are biting my sores." When they had finished eating, he ran away, calling out to them as he went: "You have eaten your own child! I am going away!—I, the Rabbit of Ngaraganza." (This might be the same as "Ukalaganza," which seems to be another name for Unyamwezi.) The women cried (lira means both to weep and to cry out; in particular, to raise the "keening" for the dead), but the men pursued him. They had all but caught him, when he ran into a hole. One man put in his hand and seized him by the tail, but he began "fer ter holler," the equivalent to the "Tu'n loose dat stump root an ketch holt er me," uttered by Brer Tarrypin in like case. Like Brer