The Girl Who Could Not Be Eaten

The king Usikulumi, son of Uthlokothloko, had a daughter named Untombinde. One year she said to him, “Father, I am going to the Ilulange. Mother, I am going to the Ilulange.” Her father answered, “Whatever goes to that place never comes back. It goes there for ever.”

The next year she came again with the same words: “Father, I am going to the Ilulange. Mother, I am going to the Ilulange.” And again he told her that nothing which went there ever returned. Another year passed, and she asked a third time. Her parents gave the same answer, but in the end they let her go.

She gathered a hundred young women on one side of the road and a hundred on the other, two whole wedding companies, and off they went. On the way they met some traders. The girls lined up on both sides of the path and said, “Traders, tell us which is the loveliest girl here, for we are two wedding companies.”

The traders said, “You are beautiful, Utintakabazana. But you cannot compare with Untombinde, the king’s child, who is like a broad stretch of fresh green grass, like fat for the cooking pot, like a goat’s gall-bladder!” At that, Utintakabazana’s company killed the traders.

So they came to the river Ilulange. The girls were wearing bracelets, breast ornaments, collars and petticoats decorated with brass beads. They took them all off and left them on the bank of the great pool, then went into the water, and both companies played and splashed there. When they had finished, they came out. A little girl reached the bank first and found nothing there: no collars, no breast ornaments, no bracelets, no beaded petticoats. “Come out,” she called. “Our things are gone.”

Everyone came out. “What can we do?” said Untombinde, the princess.

“Let us beg,” said one of the girls. “The Isikqukqumadevu has taken our things.” Then another girl began: “Isikqukqumadevu, give me back my things so that I may go. It was Untombinde, the king’s child, who got me into this trouble. She said, ‘People bathe in the great pool; our first fathers bathed there.’ Is it my fault that this has come upon you?” And the monster gave her back her petticoat.

Another girl pleaded in the same way: “Isikqukqumadevu, only give me my things so that I may go. Untombinde, the king’s child, brought me into this trouble.” One after another the whole company did the same, until only Untombinde, the king’s daughter, was left.

“Beg the Isikqukqumadevu, Untombinde,” said the others.

She refused. “I will never beg the Isikqukqumadevu. I am the king’s child.” Then the monster seized her and dragged her into the pool.

The other girls wept and wept, and then went home. “Untombinde has been taken by the Isikqukqumadevu,” they said.

“I told Untombinde long ago,” said her father. “I refused her and said, ‘Whatever goes to the Ilulange never returns; it goes there for ever.’ And now she has gone there for ever.”

The king called up his regiments of young men. “Go and bring me the Isikqukqumadevu that has killed Untombinde,” he said. When the soldiers reached the river, the monster had already come up out of the water and was lying on the bank, as big as a mountain. It came at them and swallowed the whole army. Then it went to the king’s own village and swallowed every man and every dog. It swallowed the whole country, cattle and all. Among those it swallowed were two lovely twin children whom everyone adored.

But the twins’ father escaped from his house. He took two clubs and his big assegai and set out, saying, “I am the one who will kill the Isikqukqumadevu.”

On his way he met some buffaloes. “Which way did the Isikqukqumadevu go?” he asked. “It has gone off with my children.”

“You are looking for Unomabunge, O-gaul’-iminga,” said the buffaloes. “Keep going! Keep going! Our mother!”

Next he met some leopards. “I am looking for the Isikqukqumadevu,” he told them. “It has taken my children.”

“You are looking for Unomabunge, O-gaul’-iminga, O-nsiba-zimakqembe,” said the leopards. “Keep going! Keep going! Our mother!”

Then he met an elephant and asked again. The elephant gave the same answer, with all the same names: “Keep going! Keep going! Our mother!”

At last he came to Unomabunge herself. He found her crouching on the ground, as big as a mountain. “I am looking for the Isikqukqumadevu,” he said, “who is carrying off my children.”

“You are looking for Unomabunge,” she said. “You are looking for O-gaul’-iminga, O-nsiba-zimakqembe. Keep going! Keep going! Our mother!” Then the man rushed in and stabbed the great lump, and the Isikqukqumadevu died.

Out of it came cattle, and dogs, and a man, and then all the people, and last of all Untombinde herself. When she was free, she went home to her father, Usikulumi, son of Uthlokothloko. After her return, Unthlatu, son of Usibilingwana, was chosen as the man she would marry.

So Untombinde went to present herself at her bridegroom’s home, following the bridal custom described in this telling. When she arrived, she stood silently at the upper end of the kraal. The people asked her, “Whom have you come to marry?”

“Unthlatu,” she said.

“Where is he?” they asked.

“I heard that King Usibilingwana has a son who is to be king,” she said.

“Not so,” they said. “He is not here. The king did have a son, but the boy was lost when he was small.” His mother wept and said, “What has this girl been told? I had one child, and he was lost. There was never another!”

Still the girl stayed. “Why is she still here?” asked the king. “Send her away,” said the people. But the king said, “Let her stay. I have other sons here; she shall be a wife for them.” A hut was built for her, and she lived in it. The people said she should stay with the lost boy’s mother, but the mother refused. “Let her have a house of her own,” she said.

When the hut was finished, the mother put sour milk, meat and beer inside it. “Why are you putting these here?” asked the girl. “I used to set them out even before you came,” said the mother. The girl said nothing more and lay down to sleep. In the night Unthlatu came. He ate some of the sour milk and some of the meat, and drank the beer. He stayed a long time, and then he went out.

In the morning Untombinde uncovered the sour milk and saw that some had been eaten. She uncovered the meat and saw that it had been eaten too. She uncovered the beer and found it had been drunk. “Oh!” she said. “My mother-in-law set this food here. She will say I stole it.” The mother came in, looked at the food, and asked, “What has eaten this?” “I don’t know,” said the girl. “I found it eaten too.” “Didn’t you hear the man?” “No.”

That evening a sheep was killed, and meat, sour milk and beer were set in the hut again. When it was dark, the girl lay down. Unthlatu came in and touched her face, and she woke.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I have come to be married,” she said.

“To whom?”

“To Unthlatu.”

“Where is he?”

“He was lost.”

“Then if he is lost, whom are you marrying?”

“Him, and only him.”

“Do you know that he will come? There are the king’s other sons. Why not marry one of them instead of waiting for a man who is lost? Come, let us eat some meat.”

“I don’t eat meat yet,” said the girl.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Unthlatu. “Your bridegroom gives my people meat before their proper time, and they eat it. Drink, there is beer.”

“I don’t drink beer yet,” she said, “for the goat that welcomes a bride has not yet been killed for me.”

“That doesn’t matter either,” he said. “Your bridegroom gives my people beer before anything has been killed for them.” In the morning he left. He had talked the whole time, and the girl never saw him, because all those nights he would not let her light a fire. When he had gone, she got up and felt the wicker door, thinking, “I fastened it myself. Let me see where he went out.” It was still fastened just as she had left it. “Where did the man go out?” she wondered.

In the morning the mother came and said, “My dear, whom were you talking to?”

“No one,” said the girl. “I wasn’t talking to anybody.”

“Then who has been eating the food?”

“I don’t know.”

They ate that food too, and for the third time a meal was set out: beer and meat were cooked, and sour milk was made ready. In the evening Unthlatu came, touched her face and said, “Wake up.” Untombinde woke.

“Start at my foot,” he said, “and feel me all the way up to my head, so you know what I am like.” She did, and found that his body was so smooth and slippery that her hands could not grip it.

“Would you like me to tell you to light the fire?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then give me some snuff.” She handed him the snuff. “Let me take a pinch from your hand,” he said. He took a pinch, sniffed it and spat, and the spittle spoke: “Hail, king! You dark one, as big as the mountains!” He took another pinch and spat again, and the spittle said, “Hail, chief! Hail, you who are as big as the mountains!”

Then he said, “Light the fire.” Untombinde lit it, and she saw a body that shone. She was frightened and amazed. “I have never seen such a body,” she said.

“In the morning, whom will you say you have seen?” he asked.

“I will say I have seen no one.”

“And what will you say to that mother of yours, the one who bore Unthlatu and grieves because he vanished? What does she say?”

“She weeps,” said Untombinde, “and says, ‘I wonder who is eating this food. If only I could see the man who eats it.’”

“I am going now,” he said.

“But where do you live,” asked the girl, “if you were lost as a little child?”

“I live under the ground.”

“Why did you go away?”

“Because of my brothers,” he said. “They were saying they would choke me with a clod of earth. They were jealous, because people said I would be king. ‘Why should the king be young,’ they said, ‘while we who are older stay subjects?’”

Then he said, “Go and call that mother of yours who is grieving.” The girl brought the mother in, and she cried a little, quietly. “What did I always say?” she said. “I said, ‘My child who was lost was the one with the smooth body.’”

“And what will you tell my father?” Unthlatu asked her.

“I will tell him, ‘Let the whole country brew beer,’” she said.

“What is the beer for?” asked the father, when she told him.

“I am going to see the people,” she said. “I used to be queen. I was put aside because I had no child.” So the beer was brewed, and people laughed at her. “She is calling for beer!” they said. “What can she be up to, the one who was rejected and put aside?” When the beer was ready, everyone gathered. The soldiers filed into the cattle enclosure with their shields, until they were all there. The father watched and said, “I shall soon see what the woman means to do.”

Then Unthlatu came out. His body shone so brightly that the people’s eyes were dazzled. They marvelled and said, “We have never seen a man whose body was so unlike other men’s.” He sat down, and his father was full of wonder. A great festival was held. Unthlatu’s shields rang out, for he was as great as all kings put together. Untombinde was given a leopard’s tail, and his mother was given the tail of a wild cat. The festival went on, and Unthlatu was restored to his place as king. And that is the end of the tale.

About this story

This is the Zulu tale of Untombinde as printed, with the Zulu text and an English translation side by side, in Henry Callaway’s Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, in Their Own Words, Vol. I (1868). Callaway’s notes translate Untombinde as “Tall-maiden” and describe the Isikqukqumadevu as a bloated, squatting, bearded monster. He also records that some people of his day thought the monster was a fanciful memory of the first large ship their fathers had seen, while others took it for a garbled tale of Noah’s ark. These are conjectures reported in his nineteenth-century notes, not established explanations of the tale’s origin.

Callaway explains other details too: a bride went to stand silently at her bridegroom’s kraal, and if his people accepted her, they killed a goat for her called the imvuma. He says the name Unthlatu comes from the word for a boa-constrictor, which fits the prince’s smooth, slippery, shining body.

Read the original: Callaway, Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, Vol. I (1868) — archive.org scan

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: includes traders killed, a community swallowed by a monster, threats against a child and a mother rejected after losing her son.

Refusal has two different outcomes

At the pool, Untombinde’s royal status cannot protect her when she refuses the monster’s demand. At the bridegroom’s home, however, her refusal to accept a substitute husband helps keep the missing Unthlatu’s place open. Reading only the first episode would miss the second use of her determination.

The twins’ father rescues the swallowed community, while Unthlatu’s mother has continued leaving food for her missing child. Both act for people others can no longer see. The mother’s restoration also exposes how unfairly the court has treated her for losing her son.

Compare the missing children

Make two short chains: Untombinde’s disappearance and return, and Unthlatu’s disappearance and return. Identify who warns, who searches or waits, who disbelieves, and what finally makes the lost person visible. Do those chains support one simple lesson about obedience?

Think about it

• Why did Untombinde refuse to beg the monster when all the other girls did?
• How did the twins’ father find the Isikqukqumadevu?
• How did Untombinde finally find out who was eating the food in her hut?

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