How a Woman Offered Cakes
H. (Henry) Parker translation
In a certain country there are a man and a woman, it is said. The woman has been brought from another country (district). A paramour has become associated with the woman.
She said to the woman’s husband, “In our country there is a custom. In the lower part of the garden we must offer cakes to the Yakā who is in the lower part of the garden; if not, the Yakā causes sickness. When I was living at my village, too, I offered them every day. Because of it, we must offer them now also.”
Afterwards the man said, “Hā, it is good. Continue to offer them. For it, what else do you want, etc.?”
After that, the woman said, “We don’t want anything else. Having set up two sticks, cleft into four at the top (aewari kanu), we must offer on one twenty cakes, on one thirty cakes. That is all.”
Having cooked the cakes, on the day on which she offers them she cannot cook more [food]. At the house no one can eat [afterwards on that day]; should they eat they will die.
When it is becoming dark, the paramour having come is in the lower part of the garden. The woman having offered the cakes says, “Leaving the twenty, taking the thirty, go, O Yakā.” Having said [this] the woman comes home.
The paramour having come, leaving the twenty, eats the thirty, and goes away. Afterwards the woman having come [there], eats the twenty, and goes back.
In that very manner, the woman every day having given cakes to that paramour, the woman also eats. That man was unable to find out the roguery.
North-western Province.
In Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. iii, p. 118, a man who wished to have meat to eat, induced his sons to kill a sheep and offer the flesh to the deity of a tree which stood in their field, telling them that their prosperity was due to this god.