Outa Karel's Stories: South African Folk-Lore Tales

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hman

oked hands towards the cheerful blaze and turned his e

ine big bucks with their little poisoned arrows, and they tore pieces off and ate the flesh with the red blood dripping from it: they had no fire to make it dry up. And the roots and eintjes that they dug out with their sharp stones-those, too, they ate just as they were. They did not cook, for t

overed themselves with skins, for they had no fire to sit by. Yes, they were

sked Pietie. "Do

the first people we really know anything about. In those days at a certain place lived a man, from whose armpits brightness streamed. When he lifted one arm, the place on that side of him was light; when he lif

etimes he climbed on a kopje and lifted up his arms: ach! then the light streamed out far, far,

the farther his light shines. If only we could put him

. When he is asleep, you must go; and the strongest of you must take him under the armpits, and lift him up, and swing him to and fro-so-so-and throw him as high as

not to wake him. He was in a deep sleep, and before he could wake the strong young men took him under the armpits and swung him to

hings grow. And so it went on day after day. When he put up his arms, it was bright, it was day. When he put down one arm, it was cloudy, the weather was not clear. And when he put down b

arm again; the green things grow and the fruit ripens: it is summer. And so it goes on to this day, my baasjes: t

Outa," said downright Wille

rolling round, from the time he wakes in the morning till he lies down to sleep at the other side of the world. And with the rolling, baasjes, he has got all rounder and rounde

group; but a single glance was enough to show that so interested were the children in the personal aspect of the tale that there was no fear of confus

little Jan, in his earnest wa

hen he has put his arms out. He is holding them down, and spreading his hands before the light, so that it can't shine on the world. And sometimes, jus

ted his little li

bright roads into the sky, spreading out all round him. The Old Man is peeping at the earth through his fingers. Baasjes must count the

its, and the smile with which he announced the extent of his mathematical a

m in. Then all the world grows d

night," Pietie reminded him. "There

. When friend Old Age comes the back bends and the bones get stiff, and the rheumatism-foei! but it can pinch! Therefore, my baasjes, Outa cooks bossies from the veld

til acted on by human agency; so, possessing no "Open, Sesame" for that uny