Lion Who Thought Himself Wiser Than His Mother

It is said that one day Lion and Gurikhoisip, whose name means the Only Man, were playing a game with Baboon, Buffalo, and other friends. A thunderstorm broke, and rain fell at a place called Aroxaams. Lion and Gurikhoisip started to quarrel.

“I will run to the rain-field,” said Lion.

“I will run to the rain-field,” said Gurikhoisip.

Neither would give way to the other, so they parted in anger. Afterward Lion went home and told his mother everything they had both said.

His mother said to him, “My son! Beware of that Man whose head is level with his shoulders and chest, who carries pinching weapons, who keeps white dogs, and who goes about wearing the tuft of a tiger’s tail.”

But Lion said, “Why should I be on my guard against people I already know?”

“My son,” his mother answered, “take care of the one who has pinching weapons!”

Lion would not listen to her. That same morning, while it was still pitch dark, he went to Aroxaams and lay in wait. Gurikhoisip went to the same place that morning. When he got there, he let his dogs drink, and then bathe, and when they had finished they rolled about on the ground. Then the Man drank too.

When he had finished drinking, Lion came out of the bushes. The dogs surrounded him, just as his mother had said they would, and Gurikhoisip speared him. Just as Lion realised he was wounded, the dogs pulled him down again. In this way he grew weaker and weaker.

When Lion was very faint, Gurikhoisip said to the dogs, “Leave him now, so that he can go home and be taught by his mother.” So the dogs let him go. They left him lying there and went home.

That night Lion began to walk home, but on the way his strength gave out, and he cried:

“Mother, carry me! Grandmother, carry me!
Oh, me! Alas!”

At dawn his mother heard him crying, and she said:

“My son, this is what I told you:

‘Beware of the one with pinching weapons,
who wears the tuft of a tiger’s tail,
the one who keeps white dogs!’

Alas, you son of the short-eared one,
my short-eared child!
Son of the one who eats raw flesh,
you flesh-eater;
son of the one whose nostrils are red from the kill,
you with bloodstained nostrils!
Son of the one who drinks from the water-pit,
you water-drinker!”

Where this story comes from

Honey reprints this Khoikhoi fable in South-African Folk-Tales (1910). It had first been printed as No. 23 in W. H. I. Bleek’s Reynard the Fox in South Africa (1864), where Bleek records that the Khoekhoe original, described by Bleek using an outdated colonial label, came from the manuscript of the Rev. G. Krönlein, a Rhenish missionary at Beerseba in Great Namaqualand.

The tale ends not with a moral but with the lioness’s lament, a praise-song that names her son by his traits: short-eared, raw-flesh eater, red-nostrilled, water-drinker. “Pinching weapons” is the source’s phrase for the man’s spear and tools. The spearing is told briefly here.

Read the original: Read the fable in Honey’s South-African Folk-Tales (Project Gutenberg)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: Lion is speared and attacked by dogs, and the ending is his mother’s lament.

The warning becomes a lament

Lion believes that knowing the man means knowing the danger. His mother instead names specific weapons and dogs. At the end she repeats those details, but also names her son’s own traits. The repetition is both a reminder and a grieving portrait; it gives the wounded Lion more attention than a simple “he should have listened” ending would.

Read the repeated lines aloud

Say the warning once as advice and once as part of the final lament. Which words stay the same, and how does their feeling change? Add one sentence explaining the difference.

Think about it

• What did Lion’s mother warn him about?
• Why didn’t Lion listen to her?
• What do you notice about the song the mother sings at the end?

You may also like

• Lion Who Took a Woman’s Shape — another lion tale from Krönlein’s Namaqua collection
• The Lion, The Jackal, And The Man — a lion learns that Man is the strongest creature
• Lion’s Share — Lion outwitted by Jackal