The Weeping Willows

The Weeping Willows, a story from the San/Bushmen people

The San/Bushmen enjoy stories of wizards, witches and witchcraft, as these mystic beings and their spells play a very real part in their own daily lives...

There were once ten beautiful girls, all belonging to one family. One very hot day while the sisters were playing together by the riverside, a strange old man came by.

"Dip me up some water, pretty girls," he croaked, "I am very thirsty."

"How ugly he is!," giggled the girls, "just like an old frog." And they fell about laughing... all except one, who was ashamed of her sisters' rudeness.

Unbeknownst to them, the old man was really a magician. With the wink of an eye, he turned nine of the girls into tall slender willow trees, drooping their long, leafy branches along the river bank.

The one polite daughter who was spared by the magician ran crying to her parents and, weeping profusely, told them what had happened.

Furious and blinded with grief, her parents ran to the river bank. Their father tried to chop down the nearest tree with his axe but recoiled in horror when blood gushed from the splintered bark.

Three times he tried, but each time the blood spurted out and he had to stop.

Filled with sorrow and fearing the magician's return, the parents sent their surviving daughter far, far away to a distant land. They stayed behind, living beneath the weeping willow trees, forever.

(adaptation, originally via Gateway Africa)

(images via Steve Crane and Inner Traditions)