Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/352

 328 Collectanea.

The man filled his satchels, went back to the town and gave them to his wife, who took them, and while roasting them sang a song.

The man went again and again to fetch minsansabu. The boy saw him, and told his father Nyandembe that a person was plucking his fruit. He called all his people, and they surrounded the tree with hunting-nets, in which they caught Yondoko and killed him. His wife, looking at the horn, saw it fill with blood, and knew her husband was dead.

The wife was pregnant, and when her time came she gave birth first to Mpinga7igi (small troublesome flies), then to Biiuna (blood-sucking flies), then to Njoi (bees), then to Bilolombi (another species of blood-sucking flies), then to Nkungl (mosqui- toes), then to Nkute (a troublesome night-fly), then to an animal, then to a tortoise, then to Nsongo, his sister, but Libanza was left. The mother said, " Libanza, come out." He said, " How shall I come out? Scrape your finger nails." She scraped her finger nails and said, " Come out." He threw out first a chair covered with brass nails, then a shield of iron, then his spears, and at last he himself came out.

He asked his mother where his father was ; she deceived him by saying, "When I was pregnant with you I desired the edible heart of a palm-tree, and as he went to get it he was drowned by the waves." Libanza sent the tortoise in a canoe, and then made great waves, but the tortoise crossed the river without sinking, so the father was not drowned.

Libanza asked again, "Where did father die?" She said, "I desired some large palm-maggots, and the palm-tree fell on him, and he died." Libanza said to the tortoise, " Go and fell a palm- tree." The tortoise went, and when the palm was falling he stretched his body on the ground, and let the palm-tree fall on him, but the tortoise was not killed. He returned and told Libanza ; so the father was not killed that way.

Libanza asked again, "Tell me the place where father died." She said, " I will not hide it from you. I desired some minsan- sabu belonging to Nyandembe, and your father died at the fruit- tree." Libanza sent the tortoise to the tree. The tortoise went and climbed ujd the tree, and falling on the ground, was broken into many pieces and died. The tortoise joined himself together and returned to Libanza, and told him it was true his father had