Ethiopian Folktales

Narrated by Abdul Hakim Abdulahi Jibril

There was once a famous man-eating lion around Fafen. One day he came to the village and took a four or five year-old boy. He took him off into the bush without hurting him at all. And he dropped the boy near his den. The child ran away from the lion into the den where the cubs were living. The cubs didn’t hurt the little boy but began to play with him. And the lioness didn’t hurt him either.

Then when the lion and lioness brought meat for the cubs, the boy took the meat as well and ate with the cubs.

After several days, the lioness was hungry and wanted to kill the boy and eat him but the lion protected him and stopped her. Then he suspected that when he went off hunting people or cattle, the lioness might fall on the boy and eat him, so he didn’t leave the child, but put him on his back and the child rode on him to the bush. The lion put him down there and left him while he hunted for his family, and then when he went back the boy mounted him again and rode back. The lion always did this because he did not trust the lioness.

The cubs didn’t ever try to attack the boy. They were his friends.

The boy lived like this for two years. It happened in Fafen area. I have spoken to people myself who have seen the child.

Anyway, the child said his lion was the king of the lions because he didn’t trust any other lions or his own lioness.

"I was always sitting beside him, and when all the other lions came to his house they have a meeting, sitting around in a circle and discussing something in lion language. The other lions didn’t look at my lion. They just looked at me, and then he made a sign that they should be peaceful, and after that the lions didn’t look hungrily at me and did not try to eat me. "

So the child grew like this, and after two years the lions wanted to go hunting as a group, and the chief lion said to the others, “Wait for me,” and he took the child to the village where he had come from.

Near the village he dropped him and said, “Go home.”

So the child did, and when the lion saw he had entered his village he went back to the bush.

When the people saw the child they said, “Oh! We thought the child has been eaten already by the lion. But he was saved! How is it possible?”

And the child told them everything that had happened. That child is now a big person and he tells everyone his story.