This story is taken down from an Eboe, but practically the same
story can be found among all the cloth-making tribes in West Africa.
In the old times there was a man who was a great hunter; but he had
a bad wife, and when he made medicine to put on his spear, she made
medicine against his spear, but he knew nothing of this thing and
went out after bush cow.
By and by he found a big bush cow, and threw his spear at it, but
the bush cow came on, and drove its horns through his thigh, so the
man crept home, and lay in his house very sick, and the witch doctor
found out which of his wives had witched the spear, and they killed
her, and for many days the man could not go out hunting. But he was
a great hunter, and his liver grew hot in him for the bush, so he
dragged himself to the bush, and lay there every day. One day, as
he lay, he saw a big spider making a net on a bush and he watched
him. By and by he saw how the spider caught his game, and that the
spider was a great hunter, and the man said "If I had hunted as this
spider hunts, if I had made a trap like that and put it in the bush
and then gone aside and let the game get into it and weary itself to
death quickly, - quicker and safer than they do in pit-falls - that
bush cow would not have gored me." And so after a time he tried to
make a net like the spider's, out of bush rope, and he did this
thing and put his net into the forest, and caught bush deer
(gazelles) and earthpig (pangolins) and porcupines, and he made more
nets, and every net he made was better, and he grew well, and became
a greater hunter than before.
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