Ethiopian Folktales

Narrator Unknown

There was a fox with her two cubs. She gave a name to one of them: Weynai, which means not too bright, not too black.

When the fox goes to the field to collect food she closes the door with the cubs inside. The other cub is Gella.

When the fox comes back, she says:

"One Weynai

One Gella

Open the door for me."

One day, when she calls her cubs, the hyena hears. So when the fox goes hunting, the hyena comes and calls the same way. The cubs hesitate because the voice is different. The hyena changes his voice and makes it thinner and says the same words. Now they believe it’s their mother and open the door. He eats them.

The fox comes home. When she calls her usual cry, no answer comes. She jumps into the house and she knows they’ve been eaten by the hyena.

The next day she prepares a hole in the ground and covers it with goatskin and invites the hyena to share a sheep.

“Come, eat.”

The hyena comes and she says, “Sit on the goatskin.”

But the hyena sees the goatskin sink a bit into the hole.

“Oh it’s nothing. Sit there.”

So he sits on it and falls through. The fox takes boiling water and pours it on to him.