‘Don’t think you’re holding my tail,’ wailed Jackal. ‘It’s a root from this tree!’ Lion was holding his tail so tight and the pain was so great that Jackal had to try very hard not to yell.
‘Nonsense,’ said Lion. ‘You can’t fool me.’
‘Then take a sharp stone and beat my tail with it,’ urged Jackal. ‘If you draw blood, it’s my tail. If you don’t, it’s a root.’
‘How clever,’ thought Lion, wondering where he could find a sharp stone. ‘I’ll prove him wrong’.
But when Lion let go of Jackal’s tail, Jackal slithered further and further into the hole just as he did when he was using Aardvark’s abandoned burrow.
When Lion returned with his stone and found Jackal gone, he flung it down on the ground. ‘I’m not being fooled that easily,’ he roared angrily.
‘I’ll wait for Jackal to come out of the hole.’
After many hours, Jackal grew bored lying alone in the cold, damp hole. Besides, it was almost dark and he wanted to return to his family. He crept to the entrance and peeped out with his long ears alert.
‘No sign of Lion,’ he thought. ‘I’m safe.’
He wriggled to the surface and when he stepped out into the dusk and the sound of cicadas chirping around him, Jackal yelled loudly: ‘I can see you, Lion. I know you are hiding right here.’
Lion lay still, not moving until Jackal had moved just a little closer to him. Then Lion leapt up and gave chase with great powerful strides and he was just about to catch him, when Jackal sprung up onto the rock that led up to his den.
‘I’ll get him,’ Lion said to himself. ‘I’ll wait until he goes out hunting again.’
And so Lion waited, and waited, and waited. And it wasn’t long before Jackal was driven out to hunt by his hungry pups. Lion watched as Jackal sneaked out of his den and climbed down the rocks. Quietly, Lion padded up behind Jackal without him knowing, and let out a loud roar. Jackal could not escape, and cringed in fear before the powerful beast.
The golden-maned Lion was just about to spring on Jackal, when Jackal said:
‘Wait Lion, look at what I see over there in the shadowy light. A pair of bushbuck …’
The thought of a buck immediately diverted Lion’s attention, and he looked over at the bushbuck.
‘You can help me hunt them. Just wait here, Lion, and I’ll go round to the other side and chase them so that they run towards you.’
‘Good idea,’ said Lion, crouching down on his haunches, hidden by the long grass. ‘I’m ready.’
And from his den at the top of the rocky crevice, Jackal watched as Lion lay in wait for the bushbuck.
‘Another day of fun and games,’ said Jackal smugly.
The Trickster
The trickster appears frequently in African folktales. He manoeuvres situations to his own advantage and is able to trick not only buck but the mighty king of the beasts, the lion, too. And yet, with all his cunning, he is never able to trick the humble tortoise, who always shows great wisdom and understanding. The role of the deceitful and greedy trickster is often played by the wily jackal, and he is traditionally treated with suspicion and distrust.
The Hole in the Wall
She was tall and slender, with skin that shone like water gleaming on deep brown rocks. Wrapped in a cloak of rusty brown, she sat on the edge of the cliff, looking down at the lagoon below. It was safe water, fed by the little river and protected from the sea by a great curve of rock. It was a wall, just like the walls her people made to shelter the mouths of their homes, only theirs was of woven reeds and this was of hard dark rock. The sea outside was near to high tide. She could hear the waves crashing impatiently.
Her people were a land people. They speared fish in the river and they swam in the lagoon where giant milkwood trees, with their dark shiny leaves and comforting shade, crowded the water’s edge. Long ago, they had decided that the sea was cruel and dangerous. They feared the pounding waves and the stinging spray. They knew how the cold, cold water could surge up over the rocks and snatch land people into an unseen death.
‘We do not go there,’ they told her again and again. ‘Beware the sea people. They are born of the salt spray and they are as cruel as the sea. They envy us because we rule the land and the sunny pastures. When the tide is full, they come out of the sea to graze their cattle on the cliff tops. If they see you they will catch you and take you away.’
But she found the sea endlessly attractive. Every wave was different. Every changing mood of the swelling water hinted of a greatness which was far beyond the power of man.
That was why, the last time the moon was eaten away, she had gone by herself to the shore of the full sea, beyond the wall of the rock. Out of the waves had come one of the sea people. He had been strange to look upon – as tall as she was, with silky, flowing hair like the waves. His eyes were sea blue and his bones gleamed white beneath his pale skin. He moved in a smooth flowing way. And he was kind. He had talked with her, saying how he admired the dark beauty of her skin. She listened, as if in a trance. He had watched her often, he said, and admired her from afar. Now he had come because he wanted to have her as his wife.
Her father had been angry when she told him. ‘We do not trade our young daughters with the sea people,’ he shouted. ‘What sons will you produce from the sea to hunt for me in my old age? Such a marriage is unthinkable. No – you shall see him no more. Never mention him again to me.’
But she had. She had slipped away in the dark of the night and met with her sea lover. ‘My father refuses to let me marry one of your kind,’ she told him. He had wailed and tossed his shining head and grieved. He had told her to wait until the tide was high. She must watch and see what he would do to prove his love to her. But she must stand a safe distance from the shore. So that was what she was doing. As the sun dipped low and red beyond the wall of the rock, she watched.
Was she imagining, or were those thin, willowy figures on the top of the rock? What were they bringing with them? It seemed bulky and long and unknown. Her sea man’s warning was forgotten. She stood, excited, and started to run down towards the lagoon. There were shouts behind her. The village folk had sensed something strange was happening and they followed her.
It was a huge fish that the sea people were carrying. An enormous sea serpent with green, glittering scales and a mighty head. Down to the lagoon they flowed, into the water – and then, to her despair, not towards the shore where she stood appealing but towards the high curve of rock. What were they doing? The huge fish was battering at the rock with its head. In amongst the white splashes, chunks of rocks were falling. The fish was carving a hole through the cliff itself so that soon the sea outside – and the lagoon within would be joined together.
While her father and her family and the village people stood beside her and watched with amazement and growing terror, the fish carved a passage to the open sea. A great spout of water gushed through with all the force of the tide behind it, and on the wave came hundreds of sea people, singing and shouting and waving their long arms with joy.
At the front of them all was the man who had come to claim her. He rode the wave right to her feet, stretched out his arms and she moved to join him. Then, as the wave retreated, foaming and frothing its pleasure, she went with the people of the sea – back through the hole in the rock wall. And the villagers never saw her again, though they searched and cried and waited in hope.
They say that for months afterwards, her family would wake from dreams which seemed to say that their daughter was happy beneath the sea. Her husband was a sea prince and his people were so kind. But the village folk scorned such dream messages. ‘Of course the sea people are cruel,’ they said. ‘See how they have stolen our beautiful maiden from us and given us no cattle in exchange.’
That is the tale that the Xhosa people tell. They say that the sea went on eating away at the curved rock wall until it no longer formed a barrier between the sea and the river mouth. Only the central p
iece of hard dolerite rock remains. They call the place esiKhaleni which means ‘the place of the sound’. And they say that on the nights when the tide is high, the sea people can still be heard above the noise of the waves, streaming through the Hole in the Wall in their search for a bride.
Hole in the Wall
This impressive arch was named in 1823 by a British survey ship, the Barracouta, which was surveying the coastline. Boastful swimmers have attempted to go through the Hole but the incredible force of the waves makes this almost impossible. A trooper of the Cape Mounted Rifles tried it to win a bottle of whisky in a bet, but was never seen again – so the locals will tell you. Fragments of ships wrecked on that part of the Wild Coast are often found in the quiet sheltered shore pools.
Van Hunks and the devil
Captain Van Hunks gazed up at Table Mountain. From the stoep of his house in Cape Town he couldn’t see the clump of trees on the saddle of mountain where the sharp point of Wind Mountain, as it was called, was joined to the main flat-topped bulk of the mountain. He couldn’t see them but he knew they were there. It was a long hard climb to his favourite seat under those trees. When he was younger, he could have climbed up there easily. But he didn’t have time to spare in those days. He had been far too busy, sailing the seven seas and doing some sly pirating wherever he could. Those had been grand days!
‘Where are you?’ came a screaming voice which he knew far too well from inside the house.
He was here, of course, sitting on the stoep of the house in the sunlight, feeling in his pockets for a pipe to fill with his favourite tobacco.
‘I’ve found another of your evil-smelling pipes – under the bed!’ yelled the voice even angrier.
So that was where he had hidden it. Van Hunks was glad it hadn’t been lost. Still, he did wish he had found the pipe himself rather than his wife. He ambled inside to face the whirlwind.
‘Don’t think you’re coming in here!’ shrieked his wife. ‘Here’s your pipe. Take it away. Far, far away! I’m not having the filthy smell of tobacco smoke in my clean house. I’ve told you that before.’
Van Hunks sighed. Why was it that his wife disliked the fine scent of pipe tobacco? It was one of the great discoveries of mankind. Tobacco soaked in rum had a fragrance all its own. Even the cargo he had captured on the seas of the Spanish Main had never smelt as sweet! He captured the missing pipe, grabbed his wooden keg of tobacco and a flask of wine, and escaped outside. This sort of thing happened too often. In the winter, he would head for the nearest tavern where he could enjoy a game of dice. In summer, as it was then, he preferred a walk up the mountain where the air was quiet.
Toiling up the rocky path made Van Hunks think on things such as having married a wife with such a sharp tongue and a poor appreciation of tobacco scent. Then, as the whole spread of Table Bay came into view below his feet, Van Hunks started examining the ships at anchor.
From that, it was easy to let his memory slip back into his own sailing days – the deafening broadsides of cannon and flashing cutlasses, the looting and sinking, and the chests of gold. He chuckled wickedly to himself. There had been a time when he was the terror of the seas, a pirate as feared as Old Nick, the Devil himself!
There had been good company in those days, thought Van Hunks as he made his way towards the rock where he usually sat to have his uninterrupted smoke. But what was this? Someone else had reached the spot before him and was sitting on his rock under the shade of his trees. A stranger, wrapped up in a flowing black cloak, with a dark forked beard under his wide-brimmed black hat.
‘Good morning, Captain van Hunks,’ said a welcoming voice. ‘A lovely day for a smoke!’
‘You know my name?’ gasped Van Hunks, who was out of breath as well as amazed.
‘Oh, I know everybody,’ said the stranger. ‘Especially someone as famous and feared as yourself.’
Van Hunks allowed himself to be flattered. ‘At my time of life,’ he replied, ‘I prefer to make friends rather than enemies. Will you join me in a pipe of tobacco? This dark mixture is the way I like it. It’s right to my own taste, though I doubt if anyone else could smoke as much of it as I do.’ He patted his tobacco keg with affection.
‘That sounds a little like a boast,’ said the stranger, and his eyes seemed to flash fire – or was it just a glint of reflected light? ‘Where I come from we smoke a good deal. I think I could match you, pipe for pipe, and still have breath for more.’
‘A wager!’ shouted Van Hunks excitedly. ‘Will you take a bet on it with me?’
The stranger smiled, tilted his hat back just a little and somehow that smile sent a shudder through Van Hunks. His face was as dark and weathered as Van Hunks’ own and the mouth twisted in a cruel sneer. ‘A wager indeed! Let’s say … your soul against a ship full of gold that you cannot outsmoke me.’
‘Done!’ agreed Van Hunks, without really listening. In his experience, there was no mortal man who could ever beat him in a smoking contest. He emptied the contents of his rum-scented keg onto a flat rock and divided the tobacco into two equal heaps. ‘There, sir!’ he offered. ‘Help yourself.’
The dark stranger produced a curiously shaped pipe from a deep pocket and filled it with tobacco. Then, while Van Hunks was striking flint against steel from his tinder-box to light his own pipe, the stranger seemed to conjure sparkling fire out of midair with a snap of his fingers.
Smoke started to curl from both pipes. The contest had begun. A long long silence followed. Just occasionally a throat was cleared or a pebble was stirred as one or another of the two smokers reached for another pinch of Van Hunks’ tobacco.
The sun hid itself behind Lion’s Head, voyaged around the world, and reappeared to welcome another day far away beyond the peaks of the Hottentots Holland. Its rays lit up the growing cloud of smoke wreathed around Table Mountain, for Van Hunks and the stranger were still sitting there smoking. The cloud poured over the edge of the mountain where the wind greeted it with delight.
In her Cape Town cottage, Van Hunks’ wife latched the diamond-paned windows tight shut. ‘What a south-easter!’ she exclaimed and wondered, just for a moment, what had become of her husband.
He was busy, enjoying a smoke as satisfying as he could ever remember. In a fit of unusual generosity, Van Hunks offered his flask of wine to the stranger. He was quietly amused to see how eager the stranger was to accept a drink. ‘Throat dry?’ asked Van Hunks with a smile. The stranger said nothing, but he coughed a little and eased his black hat back from his red, sweating forehead.
As the day continued and the clouds of smoke poured increasingly down the mountainside, even Van Hunks began to feel hot and sweaty. But by then the figure beside him had turned first red, then pale, then green with sickness. The moment came when he fell helplessly off his rock seat.
‘Fire and brimstone!’ he exclaimed. ‘My lungs are alight!’ And as he lay back, his hat slipped off his head. There, clear for Van Hunks to see, were two sharp-pointed curling horns.
‘You’re … Old Nick himself!’ gasped Van Hunks. ‘The devil in disguise!’
Then the coat, hat and boots disappeared in a flash of lightning! Beside him stood the ruler of hell with forked tail and cloven hooves!
‘I’ve won!’ crowed Van Hunks. ‘Now for my reward. I’ve beaten the devil himself.’
But that dark gentleman does not like to be beaten. Thunder rolled, the clouds closed in. And when the wind next blew the clouds apart, there was nobody there – only a scorched patch of turf around the rock where Van Hunks had been sitting.
Believe it or not, that is the tale. Ever since, when thick, white cloud lies like a tablecloth on Table Mountain and the south-easter blows through the town below, folk look up and say to each other, ‘See – old Van Hunks and the devil are at it again!’ And what was once known only as Wind Mountain is now always called Devil’s Peak.
Table Mountain
This flat-topped mountain, flanked by Devil’s Peak and Lion’s Head, is
probably the most famous landmark in South Africa. Its highest point, Maclear’s Beacon, is 1 113 metres above Table Bay, and the sandstone mountain is home to 2 600 different species of indigenous flora. Climbers have found about 350 different ways to the top, though most visitors prefer to use the cable way (built in 1929) which lifts over a quarter of a million people each year to the top. South of Table Mountain, the Cape Peninsula stretches down to Cape Point – ‘the most stately thing and the fairest Cape’ which the voyaging Sir Frances Drake ever saw.
Seven magic birds
There was once, so they say, a Zulu chief who sat day after day gazing sadly into the distance. Seven of his sons had gone to prove their manhood, and all had disappeared beyond the Cliffs of the Falling Goats where cannibals lived. Only the youngest boy was left – but though he was strong and seemed clever, he could not talk. No-one had ever heard him speak.
Old Mbata, the wisest Induna, who had advised his Chief for years, wondered how to bring happiness back to him. He watched and waited and listened. Then one day he approached the grieving Chief and said to him, ‘Nkosi, Lord, your youngest son has been trying to tell me something. Early in the mornings, he has pulled at my arm and pointed out towards the mountains where his brothers went. But each time my old legs moved too slowly and by the time I had arrived, there was nothing to see. But today I saw what had excited him: seven birds perched on the fence of the cattle kraal’.
‘What is so strange about birds?’ asked the Chief.
‘These birds were like none other,’ Mbata explained. ‘They were bright green with waving plumes. They seemed unafraid when the boy was near, but they flew away when I came nearer. Then they circled around my head before they flew off towards the Cliffs of the Falling Goats. It would seem to me that they are magic birds.’
African Myths and Legends Page 6