Ethiopian Folktales

Narrated by Oesha Tushklo

The donkey and the dog ran away from their master’s house because they were treated very badly and they went to live together in another place. On reaching green grassland the donkey ate so much that he couldn’t resist braying.

“Can I bray?” he asked the dog.

“No, the hyena will come and eat you. “

But the donkey couldn’t resist and he brayed three or four times.

“Well, if you want to bray, I’ll hide and see what will happen to you.”

The dog sat on a rock to see what would happen. The hyena came when he heard the donkey bray, and killed him, and put the meat beneath a rock.

The dog saw the fresh meat and he began to salivate. His mouth watered. The hyena looked up because the saliva fell on him and he saw the dog. The hyena ordered the dog to come out of the tree and skin the donkey.

The dog came down and after skinning the donkey, he saw the heart and he couldn’t resist it. His mouth watered so much he couldn’t stop himself and he snatched the heart and ate it.

When the hyena checked whether the whole body was there, he couldn’t see the heart.

“Where is the heart?” he asked the dog.

“The donkey doesn’t have a heart. If he had one, he wouldn’t have brayed to attract you.”

The dog knew now that the hyena wanted to kill him and so he ran. The hyena chased him and when he saw a thorny kind of fence the dog shot through the thorns. His whole body was through except the tail, which the hyena snatched and bit off. The thorny fence surrounded the compound of his master.

So the hyena said proudly, “You have escaped, but I have cut off your tail.”

But the dog laughed at the hyena.

“My master sleeps on a dried hide. I sleep next to him. He was going to cut off my tail anyway one of these days so that I wouldn’t scatter the ashes over him as he sleeps, as is usual for us dogs. So don’t feel triumphant. It would have happened anyway.”