the other side of the great hills offering a fat herd of oxen in

exchange for the girl. Everyone in the house and in the village

rejoiced, and the maiden was despatched to her new home. When all was

quiet again the father said to his son:



'Now that we own such a splendid troop of oxen you had better hasten

and get yourself a wife, lest some illness should overtake them.

Already we have seen in the villages round about one or two damsels

whose parents would gladly part with them for less than half the herd.

Therefore tell us which you like best, and we will buy her for you.'



But the son answered:



'Not so; the maidens I have seen do not please me. If, indeed, I must

marry, let me travel and find a wife for myself.'



'It shall be as you wish,' said the parents; 'but if by-and-by trouble

should come of it, it will be your fault and not ours.'



The youth, however, would not listen; and bidding his father and mother

farewell, set out on his search. Far, far away he wandered, over

mountains and across rivers, till he reached a village where the people

were quite different from those of his own race. He glanced about him

and noticed that the girls were fair to look upon, as they pounded

maize or stewed something that smelt very nice in earthen

pots--especially if you were hot and tired; and when one of the maidens

turned round and offered the stranger some dinner, he made up his mind

that he would wed her and nobody else.



So he sent a message to her parents asking their leave to take her for

his wife, and they came next day to bring their answer.



'We will give you our daughter,' said they, 'if you can pay a good

price for her. Never was there so hardworking a girl; and how we shall

do without her we cannot tell! Still-- no doubt your father and mother

will come themselves and bring the price?'



'No; I have the price with me,' replied the young man; laying down a

handful of gold pieces. 'Here it is--take it.'



The old couple's eyes glittered greedily; but custom forbade them to

touch the price before all was arranged.



'At least,' said they, after a moment's pause, 'we may expect them to

fetch your wife to her new home?'



'No; they are not used to travelling,' answered the bridegroom. 'Let

the ceremony be performed without delay, and we will set forth at once.

It is a long journey.'



Then the parents called in the girl, who was lying in the sun outside

the hut, and, in the presence of all the village, a goat was killed,

the sacred dance took place, and a blessing was said over the heads of

the young people. After that the bride was led aside by her father,

whose duty it was to bestow on her some parting advice as to her

conduct in her married life.



'Be good to your husband's parents,' added he, 'and always do the will

of your husband.' And the girl nodded her head obediently. Next it

was the mother's turn; and, as was the custom of the tribe, she spoke

to her daughter:



'Will you choose which of your sisters shall go with you to cut your

wood and carry your water?'



'I do not want any of them,' answered she; 'they are no use. They will

drop the wood and spill the water.'



'Then will you have any of the other children? There are enough to

spare,' asked the mother again. But the bride said quickly:



'I will have none of them! You must give me our buffalo, the Rover of

the Plain; he alone shall serve me.'



'What folly you talk!' cried the parents. 'Give you our buffalo, the

Rover of the Plain? Why, you know that our life depends on him. Here

he is well fed and lies on soft grass; but how can you tell what will

befall him in another country? The food may be bad, he will die of

hunger; and, if he dies we die also.'



'No, no,' said the bride; 'I can look after him as well as you. Get

him ready, for the sun is sinking and it is time we set forth.'



So she went away and put together a small pot filled with healing

herms, a horn that she used in tending sick people, a little knife, and

a calabash containing deer fat; and, hiding these about her, she took

leave of her father and mother and started across the mountains by the

side of her husband.



But the young man did not see the buffalo that followed them, which had

left his home to be the servant of his wife.



No one ever knew how the news spread to the kraal that the young man

was coming back, bringing a wife with him; but, somehow or other, when

the two entered the village, every man and woman was standing in the

road uttering shouts of welcome.



'Ah, you are not dead after all,' cried they; 'and have found a wife to

your liking, though you would have none of our girls. Well, well, you

have chosen your own path; and if ill comes of it beware lest you

grumble.'



Next day the husband took his wife to the fields and showed her which

were his, and which belonged to his mother. The girl listened

carefully to all he told her, and walked with him back to the hut; but

close to the door she stopped, and said:



'I have dropped my necklace of beads in the field, and I must go and

look for it.' But in truth she had done nothing of the sort, and it

was only an excuse to go and seek the buffalo.



The beast was crouching under a tree when she came up, and snorted with

pleasure at the sight of her.



'You can roam about this field, and this, and this,' she said, 'for

they belong to my husband; and that is his wood, where you may hide

yourself. But the other fields are his mother's, so beware lest you

touch them.'



'I will beware,' answered the buffalo; and, patting his head, the girl

left him.



Oh, how much better a servant he was than any of the little girls the

bride had refused to bring with her! If she wanted water, she had only

to cross the patch of maize behind the hut and seek out the place where

the buffalo lay hidden, and put down her pail beside him. Then she

would sit at her ease while he went to the lake and brought the bucket

back brimming over. If she wanted wood, he would break the branches

off the trees and lay them at her feet. And the villagers watched her

return laden, and said to each other:



'Surely the girls of her country are stronger than our girls, for none

of them could cut so quickly or carry so much!' But then, nobody knew

that she had a buffalo for a servant.



Only, all this time she never gave the poor buffalo anything to eat,

because she had just one dish, out of which she and her husband ate;

while in her old home there was a dish put aside expressly for the

Rover of the Plain. The buffalo bore it as long as he could; but, one

day, when his mistress bade him go to the lake and fetch water, his

knees almost gave way from hunger. He kept silence, however, till the

evening, when he said to his mistress:



'I am nearly starved; I have not touched food since I came here. I can

work no more.'



'Alas!' answered she, 'what can I do? I have only one dish in the

house. You will have to steal some beans from the fields. Take a few

here and a few there; but be sure not to take too many from one place,

or the owner may notice it.'



Now the buffalo had always lived an honest life, but if his mistress

did not feed him, he must get food for himself. So that night, when

all the village was asleep, he came out from the wood and ate a few

beans here and a few there, as his mistress had bidden him. And when

at last his hunger was satisfied, he crept back to his lair. But a

buffalo is not a fairy, and the next morning, when the women arrived to

work in the fields, they stood still with astonishment, and said to

each other:



'Just look at this; a savage beast has been destroying our crops, and

we can see the traces of his feet!' And they hurried to their homes to

tell their tale.



In the evening the girl crept out to the buffalo's hiding-place, and

said to him:



'They perceived what happened, of course; so to-night you had better

seek your supper further off.' And the buffalo nodded his head and

followed her counsel; but in the morning, when these women also went

out to work, the races of hoofs were plainly to be seen, and they

hastened to tell their husbands, and begged them to bring their guns,

and to watch for the robber.



It happened that the stranger girl's husband was the best marksman in

all the village, and he hid himself behind the trunk of a tree and

waited.



The buffalo, thinking that they would probably make a search for him in

the fields he had laid waste the evening before, returned to the bean

patch belonging to his mistress.



The young man saw him coming with amazement.



'Why, it is a buffalo!' cried he; 'I never have beheld one in this

country before!' And raising his gun, he aimed just behind the ear.



The buffalo gave a leap into the air, and then fell dead.



'It was a good shot,' said the young man. And he ran to the village to

tell them that the thief was punished.



When he entered his hut he found his wife, who had somehow heard the

news, twisting herself to and fro and shedding tears.



'Are you ill?' asked he. And she answered: 'Yes; I have pains all over

my body.' But she was not ill at all, only very unhappy at the death

of the buffalo which had served her so well. Her husband felt anxious,

and sent for the medicine man; but though she pretended to listen to

him, she threw all his medicine out of the door directly he had gone

away.



With the first rays of light the whole village was awake, and the women

set forth armed with baskets and the men with knives in order to cut up

the buffalo. Only the girl remained in her hut; and after a while she

too went to join them, groaning and weeping as she walked along.



'What are you doing here?' asked her husband when he saw her. 'If you

are ill you are better at home.'



'Oh! I could not stay alone in the village,' said she. And her

mother-in-law left off her work to come and scold her, and to tell her

that she would kill herself if she did such foolish things. But the

girl would not listen and sat down and looked on.



When they had divided the buffalo's flesh, and each woman had the

family portion in her basket, the stranger wife got up and said:



'Let me have the head.'



'You could never carry anything so heavy,' answered the men, 'and now

you are ill besides.'



'You do not know how strong I am,' answered she. And at last they gave

it her.



She did not walk to the village with the others, but lingered behind,

and, instead of entering her hut, she slipped into the little shed

where the pots for cooking and storing maize were kept. Then she laid

down the buffalo's head and sat beside it. Her husband came to seek

her, and begged her to leave the shed and go to bed, as she must be

tired out; but the girl would not stir, neither would she attend to the

words of her mother-in-law.



'I wish you would leave me alone!' she answered crossly. 'It is

impossible to sleep if somebody is always coming in.' And she turned

her back on them, and would not even eat the food they had brought. So

they went away, and the young man soon stretched himself out on his

mat; but his wife's odd conduct made him anxious, and he lay wake all

night, listening.



When all was still the girl made a fire and boiled some water in a pot.

As soon as it was quite hot she shook in the medicine that she had

brought from home, and then, taking the buffalo's head, she made

incisions with her little knife behind the ear, and close to the temple

where the shot had struck him. Next she applied the horn to the spot

and blew with all her force till, at length, the blood began to move.

After that she spread some of the deer fat out of the calabash over the

wound, which she held in the steam of the hot water. Last of all, she

sang in a low voice a dirge over the Rover of the Plain.



As she chanted the final words the head moved, and the limbs came back.

The buffalo began to feel alive again and shook his horns, and stood

up and stretched himself. Unluckily it was just at this moment that

the husband said to himself:



'I wonder if she is crying still, and what is the matter with her!

Perhaps I had better go and see.' And he got up and, calling her by

name, went out to the shed.



'Go away! I don't want you!' she cried angrily. But it was too late.

The buffalo had fallen to the ground, dead, and with the wound in his

head as before.



The young man who, unlike most of his tribe, was afraid of his wife,

returned to his bed without having seen anything, but wondering very

much what she could be doing all this time. After waiting a few

minutes, she began her task over again, and at the end the buffalo

stood on his feet as before. But just as the girl was rejoicing that

her work was completed, in came the husband once more to see what his

wife was doing; and this time he sat himself down in the hut, and said

that he wished to watch whatever was going on. Then the girl took up

the pitcher and all her other things and left the shed, trying for the

third time to bring the buffalo back to life.



She was too late; the dawn was already breaking, and the head fell to

the ground, dead and corrupt as it was before.



The girl entered the hut, where her husband and his mother were getting

ready to go out.



'I want to go down to the lake, and bathe,' said she.



'But you could never walk so far,' answered they. 'You are so tired,

as it is, that you can hardly stand!'



However, in spite of their warnings, the girl left the hut in the

direction of the lake. Very soon she came back weeping, and sobbed out:



'I met some one in the village who lives in my country, and he told me

that my mother is very, very ill, and if I do not go to her at once she

will be dead before I arrive. I will return as soon as I can, and now

farewell.' And she set forth in the direction of the mountains. But

this story was not true; she knew nothing about her mother, only she

wanted an excuse to go home and tell her family that their prophecies

had come true, and that the buffalo was dead.



Balancing her basket on her head, she walked along, and directly she

had left the village behind her she broke out into the song of the

Rover of the Plain, and at last, at the end of the day, she came to the

group of huts where her parents lived. Her friends all ran to meet

her, and, weeping, she told them that the buffalo was dead.



This sad news spread like lightning through the country, and the people

flocked from far and near to bewail the loss of the beast who had been

their pride.



'If you had only listened to us,' they cried, 'he would be alive now.

But you refused all the little girls we offered you, and would have

nothing but the buffalo. And remember what the medicine-man said: "If

the buffalo dies you die also!"'



So they bewailed their fate, one to the other, and for a while they did

not perceive that the girl's husband was sitting in their midst,

leaning his gun against a tree. Then one man, turning, beheld him, and

bowed mockingly.



'Hail, murderer! hail! you have slain us all!'



The young man stared, not knowing what he meant, and answered,

wonderingly:



'I shot a buffalo; is that why you call me a murderer?'



'A buffalo--yes; but the servant of your wife! It was he who carried

the wood and drew the water. Did you not know it?'



'No; I did not know it,' replied the husband in surprise. 'Why did no

one tell me? Of course I should not have shot him!'



'Well, he is dead,' answered they, 'and we must die too.'



At this the girl took a cup in which some poisonous herbs had been

crushed, and holding it in her hands, she wailed: 'O my father, Rover

of the Plain!' Then drinking a deep draught from it, fell back dead.

One by one her parents, her brothers and her sisters, drank also and

died, singing a dirge to the memory of the buffalo.



The girl's husband looked on with horror; and returned sadly home

across the mountains, and, entering his hut, threw himself on the

ground. At first he was too tired to speak; but at length he raised

his head and told all the story to his father and mother, who sat

watching him. When he had finished they shook their heads and said:



'Now you see that we spoke no idle words when we told you that ill

would come of your marriage! We offered you a good and hard- working

wife, and you would have none of her. And it is not only your wife you

have lost, but your fortune also. For who will give you back your

money if they are all dead?'



'It is true, O my father,' answered the young man. But in his heart he

thought more of the loss of his wife than of the money he had given for

her.



[From L'Etude Ethnographique sur les Baronga, par Henri Junod.]