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THE TALE OF A
WOMAN AND HER HUSBAND WHO, AT THE TIME OF A FAMINE, CHEATED THEIR
NEIGHBORS.
Once upon a time, so they say, there was a famine; and there were two
neighboring families. Now one man had many cattle ; but the other man
was poor. Said the rich man to the poor one: "Come, let us kill a cow
out of these my cattle !" And they did thus. And for about three days
they ate together the stomach and the entrails and all the interior
parts. But the good meat they cut, boiled and dried '), and the owner of
the cow took the dried pieces. But the family of the poor man spent
three evenings fasting. There- upon the woman said to the man: "Let us
now do this. Do thou get angry and, calling me 'son of a gun' '), beat
my leather skirt; and I shall cry." And the man did as she had told him.
Their neighbors, however, who had formerly kept them away from the good
meat, came to make peace between them. But the man said: "If this woman
does not go out of this house, I shall not rest to-day without doing
something to her." Thereupon said her neighbour to her: "Go, come into
our house!" And the other woman stayed with her husband to pacify the
man. The wife of the angry man now went into the house of her neighbour.
There she took the net-basket, in which the dried meat was [kept], down
from the place where it was hanging. But as she did not find anything
with which to open it, she spoke to her husband mysteriously in order
that he might show her the place of the knife, saying: "Now what wouldst
thou do unto me ? And with what wouldst thou kill me ?" And he answered
her: "With the knife that lies on the edge of the bed I would kill
thee." She took the knife, from the edge of the bed, cut the net-basket
open, and took of the dried meat; but the people of the house were with
the husband calming him. And when the angry man believed that his wife
was ready, he said to them: "Now, for your sake, may she return then to
her house; but I would have driven her away!" And taking the dried meat
which she had stolen she returned to her house; and she and her husband
ate it together. But when the other [two] entered their house, they
found that their dried meat was stolen. And in this way [the woman and
her husband] got the upper hand of their neighbors. [This is what] they
say.
i) fassa = to cut the meat in stripes, boil them, chop them and dry them
in the sun.
i) In cursing, a man is called a woman, and a woman a man. The Tigre
original here means "son of a beat;" it is, of course, a euphemism for
something worse, in the same way as "son of a gun."
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