But One Day A
Cripple Boy Started To Go Up The Ladder, And He Had Got A Long Way
Up When His Mother Saw Him, And Went Up In Pursuit.
The gods,
horrified at the prospect of having boys and women invading heaven,
threw down the ladder, and have
Since left humanity severely alone.
The Timneh people, north-east of Sierra Leone, say that in old times
God was very friendly with men, and when He thought a man had lived
long enough on earth, He sent a messenger to him telling him to come
up into the sky, and stay with Him; but once there was a man who,
when the messenger of God came, did not want to leave his wives, his
slaves, and his riches, and so the messenger had to go back without
him; and God was very cross and sent another messenger for him, who
was called Disease, but the man would not come for him either, and
so Disease sent back word to God that he must have help to bring the
man; and so God sent another messenger whose name was Death; and
Disease and Death together got hold of the man, and took him to God;
and God said in future He would always send these messengers to
fetch men.
The Fernando Po legend may be taken as fairly pure African, but the
Timneh, I expect, is a transmogrified Arabic story - though I do not
know of anything like it among Arabic stories; but they are infinite
in quantity, and there is a certain ring about it I recognise, and
these Timnehs are much in contact with the Mohammedan, Mandingoes,
etc.
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