(The original, in the Hottentot language, is in Sir G. Grey’s
Library, G. Krönlein’s Manuscript, pp. 18, 19.)
The Lion and the Jackal, it is said, were one day lying in wait for
elands. The Lion shot (with the bow) and missed, but the Jackal hit and
sang out, “Hah! Hah!” The Lion said, “No, you did not shoot anything.
It was I who hit.” The Jackal answered, “Yea, my father, thou hast
hit.” Then they went home in order to return when the eland was dead,
and cut it up. The Jackal, however, turned back, unknown to the Lion,
hit his nose so that the blood ran on the spoor of the elands, and
followed their track thus, in order to cheat the Lion. When he had gone
some distance, he returned by another way to the dead eland, and
creeping into its carcase, cut out all the fat.
Meanwhile the Lion followed the bloodstained spoor of the Jackal,
thinking that it was elands’ blood, and only when he had gone some
distance did he find out that he had been deceived. He then returned on
the Jackal’s spoor, and reached the dead eland, where, finding the
Jackal in its carcase, he seized him by his tail and drew him out with
a swing.
The Lion upbraided the Jackal with these words: “Why do you cheat me?”
The Jackal answered: “No, my father, I do not cheat you; you may know
it, I think. I prepared this fat for you, father.” The Lion said: “Then
take the fat and bring it to your mother” (the Lioness); and he gave
him the lungs to take to his own wife and children.
When the Jackal arrived, he did not give the fat to the Lion’s wife,
but to his own wife and children; he gave, however, the lungs to the
Lion’s wife, and he pelted the Lion’s little children with the lungs,
saying:
“You children of the big-pawed one!
You big-pawed ones!”
He said to the Lioness, “I go to help my father” (the Lion); but he
went quite away with his wife and children.