The Origin Of The Axe

This tale has been adapted from the original for readability:

There was a boy and a girl. The boy was good at stoning birds, and one day he knocked one down. The girl took the bird he’d caught and ate it. The boy cried for his bird, and the girl gave him a single grain of corn to make up for it. He put the corn on the ground, and the ants ate it. He cried out at the ants, and the ants gave him a cooking pot. He took the pot to fetch water, but the water swept it right out of his hands. He cried out at the water, and the water gave him a fish. He laid the fish on the shore, and a hawk swooped down and carried it off. He called to the hawk, and the hawk gave him a feather from its wing. He set the feather down, and the breeze whisked it away. So he cried out to the breeze and sang of everything that had been taken from him, each loss leading to the next.

The breeze took pity and gathered plenty of fruit for him, but a baboon snatched the fruit and ate it. The boy cried out at the baboon, and the baboon gave him an axe. He carried the axe to town, but the chief took it from his hands. Then the boy spoke to the chief and told him the whole chain of it, how he’d suffered one loss after another until, at last, he’d been given that axe, and now even that was being taken. He asked what he was meant to do.

The chief said nothing like this had ever come to the town before, and he wanted the axe. He offered the boy money for it. The boy said that if the chief meant to take it, he must pay well, because the axe had cost him dearly. The chief agreed, gave him plenty of money, and promised he would never have to struggle again. The boy accepted, handed over the axe, and the chief thanked him.

The chief had the blacksmith examine it, and the smith tried to make another like it, but it was not as good as the first. The chief wanted to send the boy back to learn more, but the boy begged him not to, saying he would not survive the place where he had suffered so much. So the chief kept the axe, found a skilled man who knew such things, and had him show the people how to use it to split wood. After that, others learned to make axes too, and in time they spread across the world.