Ethiopian Folktales

Narrated by Iyasu Origo

There was a queen who had three breasts. There had been drought for seven years and all the people died. There were only two men left. The two men were her grandsons. Many people died and many fled. The only ones left were these three.

There was no one to sleep with her to multiply the people.

So, because it was not right to have intercourse with your grandchildren, she slaughtered a sheep and put the hide on her eyes and said, “Come and sleep with me one by one, so I can’t see you, when my menstruation is over.”

First a daughter was born. And then another one.

After that she gave her in marriage to one of her grandsons. When they were married they gave birth to a son and baby daughter.

But there was a big animal, Golja, a dragon, who ate people. The queen wanted to kill the dragon so that they could all survive.

She prepared a pit trap and put in it her unmarried daughter to attract Golja.

So the dragon came and went into the pit and impaled himself on the spears in the pit, and fell on the girl and she died.

So elderly people say to this day that after that incident the Bena people multiplied and multiplied from that small family.