Why has Jackal a long, black stripe on his back?

Jackal
Jackal
Sun
Sun

The Sun, it is said, was one day on earth, and the men who were travelling saw him sitting by the wayside, but passed him without notice.

Jackal, however, who came after them, and also sitting, went to him and said, “Such a fine little child is left behind by the men.”  He then took Sun up, and put it into this awa-skin (on his back).  When it burnt him, he said, “Get down,” and shook himself; but Sun stuck fast to his back, and burnt Jackal’s back black from that day.

South African Folktales, J.A. Honey, 1910, Baker and Taylor Company.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s