Ethiopian Folktales

Narrator Unknown

This tells us there were three people, who started a journey together. And as they started this long journey they took one goat for provisions. They cut the neck, but without sucking her (ie skinning and washing out), and the place where they rested they put up their tent. After they washed the goat they boiled the meat. Two of the men were tall and one short. So the two tall ones were contemptuous of the short one. So they decided to fool him.

So after they’d cooked the meat, the tall ones said “If all three of us eat it there’s not enough for us. Now, let’s go to sleep and whoever has a good dream will eat the meat.”

They conspired.

They said, they would pretend they had had good dreams and so eat the meat.

The short man realised what they were up to and agreed.

“If you think in that way, I will ask my Creator to show me a good dream,” he said and lay down.

When the two had really fallen asleep, the despised short guy got up and opened the dish and ate and ate. He ate until he had had enough. He put just the bones back into the pot and covered the pot and went to sleep.

The two tall ones woke up and woke the short one to tell him what they had dreamed or had not dreamed.

The first one said, “What I dreamed today was, I went up to Arshi (the house in the sky). I met my creator and I was talking to him.”

The second also, “I went to Mecca and met the Prophet Muhammed and I was talking with him.”

The third one, the short one said, “Well lads, on my side, I didn’t dream such dreams. In the night a fat black slave placed his foot on my neck and was eating up the meat from me, so let’s look at the food.”

And they found the pot empty.

“Now this wasn’t a dream,” they said, “It was reality. So when the man was eating the meat why didn’t you wake us up?”

“What? From where could I get you at that time? One of you was in Paradise, talking to his Creator, the second was in Mecca, talking with the prophet Muhammed. So I couldn’t have found you.”

So they were angry and slept without eating anything.

On the second day they ate the provisions for that day, and feeling a grudge, they conspired to trick the short man. And while he was sleeping, they lit a fire to punish him, setting fire to his blanket and his straw sleeping mat. But secretly the short man put it out as if he hadn’t see anything. He just stayed quiet, tolerating it. After the others had finished their work, he got up and cut off the upper and lower lips of the donkeys, leaving their gums exposed, so that they looked as if they were laughing.

Then he went to sleep.

Now in the morning, those men woke up and said, “You terrible man, due to a curse brought upon you, fire  came from the skies to burn you, and it almost burnt us too, so get up, wake up.” 

“What?! So then, are you donkeys laughing at my being burnt?” he said to them.