The monster roared at Begi, “Hey there, weakling! You come at the right time! I have finished digesting the children I had for breakfast and I’ll have you for my supper!”
“I’m hungry too,” said Begi. “I haven’t eaten today.”
“There’s something to eat sitting on your head,” the monster exclaimed. “You’d better make the most of it before I gobble you up!”
Privately to the bird, Begi whispered, “There’s no need to be afraid. I would rather hear you sing than make a meal of you. But I don’t believe this monster cares about music.”
Addressing the monster more loudly, he went on, “No! I’m saving this bird for the time when I’m so weak I cannot go and hunt for food.”
The monster laughed. “If I eat you, when will the day come which finds you so hungry you must eat your pet?”
“I don’t know,” answered Begi. “Any more than you know when the day will come when the giant whose back you ride on will need to eat you.”
“I don’t ride on anybody’s back,” declared the monster.
“In that case,” said Begi, “whose are the jaws I see closing on you? Whose is the voice I hear making the welkin ring?” He raised his blunt spear and pointed.
The monster looked out to sea and saw the black clouds looming down on the village and the waves rippling like the tongue of a hungry beast licking its chops and heard the sound of thunder like the grumbling of hunger.
“There is the giant whose back you have been riding on,” said Begi. “It’s called the sea. We men are like fleas compared to it, so we are usually safe—we would not even make a mouthful for such a colossus. Even so, sometimes it hurts us when we annoy it and it scratches. But you are as much bigger than I am as I am bigger than this bird on my head. And by the sound of it the sea is very hungry.”
The monster saw the flash of lightning like the gleam of white fangs in the mouth of the ocean, and he jumped up howling and ran away. He was never heard of again.
When the people came back to the village from where they had been hiding in the bush, they asked Begi, “Are you not a mighty warrior, to have driven away that horrible monster?”
So Begi showed them his blunt spear and the shield with a hole in it which he always carried, and they said, “What does this mean?”
“It means,” he explained, “that you cannot use a spear to kill a flea which is biting you, and a shield is no use against a monster that could gobble you up shield and all. There is only one way to win against both a flea and a monster: you must think better than either of them.”4
BEGI AND THE GHOST
Once the people were much troubled by a tlele-ki (ancestral spirit) which terrified the women going to fetch water and made the children have bad dreams.
Begi’s father the chief called together the kotlanga (council of adults), and Ethlezi (lit. “sorcerer, medicine-man”) told him, “It is the spirit of your father, Begi’s grandfather.”
The chief was very upset. He asked Begi, “What can grandfather want with us?”
Begi said, “There is only one way to find out what a ghost wants. We will go and ask him. Or if you won’t, I will by myself.”
So he learned from Ethlezi the right way to speak politely to a ghost and went out at night to the dark lonely place where it had been seen. He said, “Grandfather, I have brought you palm-wine and goat’s blood. Eat if you will but talk to me.”
The ghost came and drank the wine and took the blood to make itself strong. It said, “Begi, here I am.”
“What do you want with us?” Begi asked.
“I keep watch on the village. I see that everything is going badly. The law-suits are not judged as I would have judged them. Young people are disrespectful to their elders. The girls go with boys they do not intend to marry. There is too much food so that people grow fat and lazy and there is so much palm-wine that they get drunk and sleep when they should be hunting.”
“My father the new chief judges law-suits differently because he is dealing with different people,” Begi said. “The young people learned how to talk to their elders from their parents, who were taught by you. The girls choose their own husbands now and when they marry they are happier than their mothers. As for being lazy and sleeping, why not, when we know that spirits like you keep watch over the village?”
The ghost had no answer to that and it went away.5
BEGI AND THE WICKED SORCERER
Begi came to a village where everybody was afraid of a sorcerer called Tgu. He could make cows and women miscarry, he could set huts on fire without going near, he could make witch-dolls and if he stabbed with his special knife the footprint someone left in a muddy path the person would fall sick or die.
Begi said to Tgu, “I want you to help me kill a man whose name I cannot tell you.”
The sorcerer said, “Pay me. But you must bring something of his—a hair or a scrap of nail or some of the clothes he has worn.”
“I will bring you something of his,” said Begi. He went away and came back with some excrement. Also he gave the sorcerer a mirror and some valuable herbs he had gathered.
The sorcerer made a witch-doll and roasted it at the fire singing powerful magical chants. When it was dawn the people of the village came to see because they were afraid to come at night, the magic was so strong.
“The man will die,” said the sorcerer.
“Now I can tell you his name,” said Begi. “It is Tgu.”
The sorcerer fell on the ground in a fit, shrieking that he had been tricked. He said he was sure to die at once.
Begi took the chief of the village apart and said, “Wait one more hour. Then you can tell him the excrement belonged to a friend of mine called Tgu in another village. I am going away to laugh with my friend at the foolishness of the sorcerer.”6
BEGI AND THE STEAMSHIP
(Author’s note: this must be a very late accretal to the mythos.)
Begi went to the seaside and there he saw a big ship with smoke coming out. A white man from the ship met him on the shore and talked with him.
Begi said, “Welcome. Be my guest while you are here.”
The white man said, “That is a foolish offer. I am coming to live here.”
Begi said, “Then I will help you build your hut.”
The white man said, “I will not live in a hut. I will live in a house of iron with smoke coming out of the top and be very rich.”
Begi said, “Why do you wish to come here?”
The white man said, “I am going to rule over you.”
Begi said, “Is it better living here than where you come from?”
The white man said, “It is too hot, it rains, it is muddy, I do not like the food and there are none of my own women.”
Begi said, “But if you want to come and live here it must be better in some respect. If you don’t like the weather, the food or the women, then you must think it is better governed than your own country, and my father the chief rules us.”
The white man said, “I am going to rule you.”
Begi said, “If you have left your own home you must have been sent away. How can a man who has been sent from home into exile rule better than my father the chief?”
The white man said, “I have a big steamship with many strong guns.”
Begi said, “Let me see you make another.”
The white man said, “I cannot.”
Begi said, “I see the way of it. You are good at using what other people have made and nothing else.” (Author’s note: it is an insult in Shinka to say that a man cannot make anything, as a self-respecting adult is expected to build his own house and carve his own furniture.)
But the white man was too stupid to see Begi’s point and he came and lived here anyway.