372 FOLK LORE 



The Lion and the Little Giels 



Two little girls were going along the path one 

 day, and found the head and horns of a bushbuck, 

 whose body had been eaten by a lion in the night. 

 So they picked the head up and carried it along 

 with them. But before they had gone very far, 

 the lion came to look for it, and found it had dis- 

 appeared, so he followed upon the scent of the 

 little girls growling fiercely and saying : 



" My horns, give me back my horns ; 

 My horns, give me beick my horns." 



So the little girls were dreadfully afraid, and ran 

 as hard as they could to the nearest village, and 

 hid themselves in a goat-house. But the lion 

 came sniffing round, and kept saying in the most 

 awful tones : 



" My horns, give me back my horns ; 

 My horns, give me back my horns.'" 



But his head was too large to go into the door 

 of the goat-house, which was quite dark inside, and 

 as the little girls clung together in an agony of 

 terror, the earth suddenly gave way, and they fell 

 into the hole of an ant-eater. 



" Oh, ant-eater," they said, " show us the other 

 way out, for the lion wants to kill us." But the 

 ant-eater laughed. " I am not afraid of the lion," 

 he said ; "he cannot kill me, my armour is too 

 strong. I will go and tell him to go away." So, 

 to the lion's surprise, a voice he thought belonged 



