The Master Weaver

It is unwise to change the medicine on one’s husband’s spear, as Sassa found out to her sorrow. Still, she acquired a much handsomer frock as a resultant occurrence.

Until he married Sassa, Malla was a great hunter—the greatest in his tribe, for he never failed to bring home game when he went hunting in the bush.

Malla used to put medicine on his spear—at least that is what he called it—but it was only a kind of grease, and then he would hold up his spear in front of him and say:

“Kill, kill, spear of mine, Earth-pig and porcupine, Bush-cow and bush-deer, Kill, kill, little spear.”

It was very odd, but after he married Sassa, his spear was always getting fast in the trees, or gliding past the bush-cows without touching them. The fact was, Sassa did not want him to go hunting, and as she knew a better charm than his, she rubbed a different medicine onto the spear after he had finished with it. And this is what she would say:

“Bush-deer and bush-cow, Say, who shall hurt you now? By my spell you shall be Safe and free, safe and free.”

Malla did not know this, of course, and one day he went out after a big, savage bush-cow. He threw his spear as skilfully as usual, but it passed through the animal’s horns and struck a tree. Then the bush-cow rushed furiously upon him, and gored him, injuring him so much that he could hardly creep home.

As he lay in his hut, in great pain, his friends found out that it was Sassa’s fault that he got hurt, and they punished her for it. They need not have done so, for Sassa was punished sufficiently by seeing her husband in pain, and she nursed him very tenderly.

One day she said to him, “I witched your spear to make you give up hunting, because it is so dangerous.”

“I shall never give it up while I can drag myself into the bush,” said her husband. “Once a hunter, always a hunter, Sassa.”

Long before he had recovered from his wounds, and while he was too weak to walk, he would creep on his hands and knees into the bush, and lie there all day. His wife tried to persuade him to stay in the hut, but he said if he couldn’t hunt the animals, he could at least watch them.

One day as Malla was lying on his back, looking up at the trees, he saw a spider making a net, so he said to him, “You also, my lord spider, are a great hunter.”

“If you had made a trap like this, and caught the bush-cow in it, you would not have been hurt,” replied the spider.

“It would have been much better,” Malla agreed. “I think I will make a net of bush-rope.”

Now bush-rope is the stem of a creeping plant which grows in African forests, and is very strong and tough; so Malla took the thickest he could find, and made a net, and put it between two bushes.

Then in the morning when he went to look at it, he found bush-deer, earth-pigs, and porcupines struggling in it. “I told you it would be a good thing,” said the spider.

Then Malla made another net, and it was made better than the first, and then he made a third one which was better still, and made of finer rope.

One day Sassa said to him, “If you could weave a very fine net, I would wear it;” for like all the other women who lived in the forest, she had nothing to wear but a kind of coarse cloth made of bark, which shrank when it was wet.

Malla said he was willing to try, but he could not make the cloth of the right shape, and so he went to the spider again.

“I make my net on sticks,” said the spider; “and you must do the same thing. But why should you, who are a mighty hunter, waste your time making dresses for your wife?”

Then Malla hunted around until he found some very fine rope, and fixed his sticks near the spider’s web, so he could see just how he made it. Then he wove a piece of cloth which was the right shape, and pleased Sassa very much.

One day she showed him a place where some long, silky grass grew, and then said to him, “If you can make the cloth of this grass, instead of the bush-rope, it would be finer still.”

So Malla showed some of it to the spider. “I have made nets of thick bush-rope and thin bush-rope. Can I make one out of this?” he asked.

Then the spider growled out, “Women are never satisfied,” but he was a good-natured spider on the whole, and showed Malla how to weave a fine, beautiful cloth of grass, of which Sassa was very proud.

All the other women envied her as she wrapped herself in it and walked past the other huts. “How lucky she is,” they said. “Her husband is not only a mighty hunter, but he can make finer cloth than anyone else.”

Malla continued to make bush-rope nets to catch game, and was so successful that he and his friends feasted all the year round.

Both he and Sassa lived to a great age, and saw their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Even when he was old and grey-headed, he was called “The Great Hunter;” but when they called him, in addition, “The Master Weaver,” he would point to the bush where the spider wove his silvery web:

“He taught me all I know,” he said. “He is the Master Weaver!”