The Landlordየመሬት ባላባቱ

Narrated by Duwal Pul

Once upon a time, there was a notorious landlord. He had a donkey and a huge estate. He used to ride across his estate on the donkey with an escort of guards and he always used to bother the serfs.

He would say, “Work hard! Or I won’t let you eat! Plough hard! Or I’ll punish you. Harvest well!”

He always gave very strict orders and gave the serfs a hard time.

During this time, the landlords had a competition of who had the best farm and who produced the best harvest. Whenever this lord lost the competition, he would kill some of his serfs. One day, one of his serfs, who was very clever, got really tired of the landlord.

So he went to the landlord’s hut and he said, “My harvest is ready, and I’ve made beer from the sorghum. Please come to my place and have some beer."

And as they were going along, the landlord was riding and the serf was walking beside him. But the serf had tied a rope across the road and the landlord didn’t see it and the donkey tripped and fell.

The landlord hurt himself as he fell, so the serf said, “That stupid donkey! He’s tripped on purpose. Chase away the donkey. Let’s walk.”

So they chased it away and carried on walking. And they went along a long road through the forest where a wild ostrich lived. The ostrich knew the people of the village, but it would attack strangers. So the ostrich attacked the lord and started pecking at him, and the lord went running off trying to escape.

But ostriches are very fast so the ostrich ran after him and kicked him and the landlord fell down and died.