The members of a West African tribe tell the legend all of
the Sky Maiden. The people of the tribe noticed their cows we are giving less
milk than they used to. They could not understand why. A young man volunteered to stay up all night
to see what was happening. After waiting in the darkness, hiding in a bush, he
saw something extraordinary. A young
woman of astonishing beauty rode a moonbeam down from heaven to earth, carrying
a large pail. She milked the cows, filled her pail, and climbed to back up the
moonbeam to the sky.
The next night, he set the trap where the cows were kept, and
when the maiden came down to milk cows, he sprang the trap and caught her.
”Who are you?” he demanded.
She explained that she was a Sky Maiden, a member of a tribe
that lived in the sky and had no food of their own. It was her job to come to
earth at night and find food. She pleaded with him to let her out of the net
and she would do anything he asked. The man said he would release her only if
she agreed to marry him.
”I will marry you,” she said, “but first you must let me go
home for three days to prepare myself. Then I will return and be your wife.” He
agreed.
Three days later she returned, carrying a large box. “I will
be your wife and make you very happy,” she told him, “but you must promise me
never to look inside this box.”
For several weeks they were very happy together. Then one
day, while his wife was out, the man was overcome with curiosity and opened the
box. She saw her husband looking strangely
at her and she said, “You looked in the box, didn’t you? I cannot live with you
any more.”
“Why?” the man asked.
“What is so terrible about peeking into an empty box?”
“I am not leaving you because you opened the box. I am
leaving because you said it was empty. It was not empty; it contained light and
the air and the smells of my home in the sky. When I went home for the last
time I filled that box with everything that was most precious to me to remind
me of where I came from. How can I be your wife if what is most precious to me
this emptiness to you?”
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