Ethiopian Folktales

Narrated by Yisahak Aldade

Once upon a time there was an old king, and he married a young girl. This young girl moved into the castle and she became the queen, and obviously she flourished because there was lots of honey and fat and meat and everything for her to have. But it is human nature you know, that when you get everything, you look for something more.

So, after some time, the queen wanted to have an affair with somebody. So she looked at all her husband’s servers, and amongst them she saw one young man. He was tall and muscular and very, very handsome, so she decided that she wanted to date him. And then she started giving him all sorts of tasks. She always kept him by her side, so she made him do everything she wanted, so that he would always be before her eyes.

Now this server had been brought up in the king’s house, and he had no idea of what was going on, and he kept on doing everything she asked him, without suspecting anything.

Then one day, this was too much for the queen, so she asked him directly whether he would sleep with her or not.

“Oh my God, this is appalling,” the young server said, “The king, he is like my very own father. He brought me up. How can I ever have an affair with his wife? This is outrageous. I would rather die than have an affair with you.”

Now the queen was really furious and she insisted and insisted, but the young guy was resolute. He was loyal and he kept on refusing, and the queen became very angry, and she didn’t want to see him in front of her any more and she wanted her revenge.

After some time, it was the king’s birthday. So on the day of his birthday she went up and she appeared sad.

And he said “What’s wrong?”

And she said, “One of your servers, he has disgraced me, he has dishonoured me, he has considered me cheap.”

And the king said, “Why? What’s wrong?”

And she said, “You know the young server, he asked me to have sex with him.”

And the king was furious, and he said, “How can that be? He is like my own son, he grew up in this house. This is appalling. This is an insult, not only to you, but also to me. Therefore he must die, I will get him killed right away.”

And the queen said, “No, tomorrow is your birthday, we should kill him tomorrow, and I should be involved. I would like to have a pit dug out for his grave.”

And the king agreed, because he was so angry, and he said, “OK, you get the pit dug out. I’ll leave that responsibility to you, and I’ll get him killed.”

So the king called some of his soldiers and he said, “Look, I want you to go and stand out on this entrance near the big pit tomorrow and whoever I send, no matter who it is, I want you to chop off his head and bury him in the pit.”

And the queen went and she got a very deep pit dug out for him.

So after some time the king called the young boy and he said, “Boy, tomorrow what I want you to do is at nine o'clock, go to such-and-such a place.”

And the young boy was totally unsuspecting, and he said, “Of course, Your Majesty, if you say so, I will.”

So the next day it was around half past eight and the queen thought to herself, “Well, the king must have got him killed by now, I’d better go and see how his burial is going.”

And she went to the place where the pit was, and the king’s guards seized her, and she said, “What do you think you are doing?”

And they said, “The king told us to chop off the head of anybody who comes this morning, and to bury that person.”

And the queen said, “That is outrageous! He didn’t mean me.”

But the guards said, “No, we have our orders. Therefore we must follow our master’s orders.”

And they chopped off her head and buried her in the pit.

A few minutes later the young server came and he said, “What’s going on?”

“Oh, this is unbelievable, this is outrageous,” the guards said. “The king made us kill his own wife, and we have just buried her.”

Now the young server went rushing back to the king and he said, “Your majesty, the queen has just been killed by your guards.”

And the king was furious, he tore out his hair and he was very angry at first. But then he calmed down and he looked into the story, and when he heard the true version of everything that happened, he was very, very sorry and he said, “The queen got just exactly what she deserves.”

And after that he remarried and he lived a very happy life.

Therefore the moral of the story is, don’t dig the pits too big for your enemy, because you might end up in them.