CHAPTERIXTHE FEAST IN THE VILLAGEMpokoand Nkunda could not remember any feast which was so great a feast as the one that celebrated the killing of the elephants. The preparation of food and the cooking of it took nearly every dish, pot, and pan to be found in the village. Some of these were of wood, some of iron, some of pottery, and some of basket-work. The framework of the baskets used for food was sometimes of wood, with thin strips of cane or narrow splints woven in and out, and maybe a wooden rim. Sometimes the white wood used for baskets and dishes was stained black, and a pattern was cut out by carving away the black surface, leaving a raised black decoration on white. Baskets could be so closely woven that they would hold milk. Some were made in the form of a demijohn, or bottle, and covered with rubber-like juice to make them water-tight, and these were generally used to hold beer.The pottery used at the feast was partly plain and partly decorated. Cooking pots and porridge pots were straight-sided. Beer pots wereshaped like an egg with a hole in the end. Water jars were made oval with a spreading top, and there were round pots to hold the fat, salt, and spices used in cooking. Some of this ware was colored red with oxide of iron, and some was covered with a black glaze. It was made by hand, without any potter’s wheel, dried in the sun, and then burned in a wood fire.The making of the round dishes or cups called calabashes was even simpler. Some of them were made of gourds with the inside scooped out, and some were picked off a tree as they were. The curious tree called the baobab, which is one of the silk-cotton family of trees, bears a large, gourdlike fruit which the natives call monkey-bread. The shell is about the right size and shape for dishes, bowls, and cups.potteryOne of the most important articles needed for the feast was palm oil, and it was good that there was a large supply on hand. In so hot a climate, with no ice or ice-boxes, it is out of thequestion to keep butter for use in cooking. The palm oil is used for various purposes in cooking in place of butter, fat, lard, or olive oil. It is made from the fruit of the oil palm, which is an olive-shaped, plumlike fruit with a kernel inside a thick, fleshy outer envelope. The fruit grows in long red and yellow clusters. When the men have climbed up the palm tree and brought down the bunches, the fruits are cut off the main stem and cooked in water until they are soft and the kernel is loosened from the pulp. Then this pulp is pounded in a large mortar to free the kernels, which are put aside in a pile, and the thick, orange-colored, oily mass is dumped into a hollow log of wood like a trough. The log rests on crossed sticks sothat it slopes at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and a pan or jar is set under the lower end to receive the oil. Hot stones are mixed with the pulp, and the oil, thinned by the heat, runs down into the jar. Sometimes the kernels are eaten, and sometimes they are pounded up to make more oil.making butterPalm oil was used for other things besides cooking. It could be burned in a homemade lamp,—an earthen dish with a floating wick,—and it was used for any ordinary purpose for which oil is used. Finally, it served the purpose of cold cream in massaging and oiling the skin. Before a feast, or after any great exertion, it was always used in this way, and the dancers who were to entertain the company began quite early to rub one another’s limbs with oil from the little ornamental dishes of palm oil. However, there was plenty of oil for all these uses, without touching the supply in jars that would be carried to the coast traders, to be used in some far-away factory for making soap or candles.Presently the guests began to gather and the musicians to play. Besides the drums with their boom! boom! boom! there were several other instruments—the sansi, a kind of woodenpiano or xylophone, the marimba, another form of the same thing, flutes made of hollow reed, and a guitar-like instrument with the body of it covered with skin. The dancers soon assembled, and the rattles tied to their ankles and the clapping of the hands of the spectators kept time to the wild music. This entertainment would go on all night, probably for two or three nights.musical instrumentsWhen it was time for the feast to begin, girls and boys went about first of all with water in calabashes and jars, that every one might rinse out his mouth and wash his hands before eating. Mpoko and Nkunda had been taught always to do this before a meal, and they had also a kind of wooden toothbrush which kept the teeth cleaner, if anything, than the ones sold in shops. Some people say that the care which these tribes take of their teeth is thereason why they usually have such very white and sound ones.The men and women did not eat together. The principal men were served first, and after they had taken what they chose from the dishes, the women and children had the rest in their turn. Meat and gravy were cooked in one dish, dumplings, kwanga, or cooked rice were served in another, vegetables in another. The people ate with their fingers. A lump of kwanga, dumpling, bread, or cooked rice was taken in the fingers and dipped in the broth. The dumpling was swallowed whole; it could not be chewed, as it would stick to the teeth like so much glue, but it would slip down whole like an oyster. Groups of friends or relatives ate together, and good breeding was shown in the special care which every well-brought-up guest would take, to eat no more than his proper share. Greediness is very unpopular among the Bantu, and any unfair division of food is regarded as the worst possible manners.During the days that the feast lasted, appetites were saved up for the evening meal, and nobody ate anything during the day except perhaps a little fruit, a handful of peanuts, or some sugar-cane juice. The Alo Man toldtales, there was much dancing and singing, naps were taken at any time of day by those who were sleepy, and the children played many games. The children often made almost as much noise as the grown people, for the boys had a band of their own. Nkula, who had a biti—a kind of marimba—which he had made for himself, was leader.A game that was a general favorite was played with the biti and the other instruments, and a needle. In playing it, the boys divided into two camps, Mpoko being captain of one, and Satu, a boy from a neighboring village, of the other. Boko, one of Mpoko’s players, was sent out of sight and hearing, and Mpoko then took a needle—a rather large bone needle used for raffia or sinew—and hid it so that both camps would know where it was. Meanwhile Satu’s camp had agreed upon a certain note in the scale played on the biti, which should be the “guiding note.” Then Boko was called back to hunt for the needle. When he came near the needle, the player of the biti, Nkula, who was in Satu’s camp, must sound the guiding note, mixing it up with as many variations and other notes as he could, and when Boko moved away from the needle, the guiding note mustnot be sounded. Of course, if Nkula did not keep to this rule Mpoko’s side would make trouble for him. To win for his side, Boko must not only find the needle but must name the guiding note.Boko had a quick ear, and he was a shrewd boy. Within two or three minutes he was nearly sure where the needle was, but he was not certain about the guiding note. Satu’s side made such a racket that all the notes in the scale seemed to be part of it. Mpoko felt more than once like calling out “Otuama” (you are warm) when Boko stopped two or three times almost on top of the needle, but of course that would never do. Then Boko walked across the ground and came back, went straight to the hiding place, picked up the needle, and sounded the correct guiding note!After they had kept quiet, watching the search for the needle, as long as active boys could, they played the game called “antelope.” Boko, having won in the last game, was antelope. A line was scratched on the ground, marking out a large court, and all the boys except Boko got down on all fours with their faces uplifted. They were the hunters, and they tried to touch Boko with their hands, or kick him with their feet,or butt him with their heads, or pen him up between them and the boundary line. Since they had to chase him on all fours, Boko had an advantage, and once he jumped right over a hunter who almost had him. When they finally did get him hemmed in and he ran out of the ring, they all got on their feet and chased him, and Nkula, the first to touch him, was antelope in his turn.Some of the smaller children were playing a game of their own, under a bush where the fowls had been having a dust bath. The large, black, glossyloso(canna seeds) were used in this game. While one player went out, the others hid a canna seed in one of five little heaps of dirt. The searcher had to sweep away the four heaps that did not hold any seed, and leave untouched the heap that did. If he guessed correctly, it counted one game for his side.When they were tired of “antelope,” the older boys played a rather difficult memory game, called “loso,” with forty canna seeds. Satu and Mpoko chose sides, and all sat on the ground around an open space. Satu, taking twenty seeds in each hand, led the play. His side had agreed beforehand that the seventh seed thrownshould be the “playing seed,” and the other side would have to guess which it was, and pick it up. Satu threw first a seed from the right hand, then one from the left, counting aloud as he threw until he had thrown ten all together—solo, beri, tatu, inno, tano, tandatu, pungati, inani, kenda, ikundi. Then he threw down the other seeds helter skelter, without counting, but so as not to disturb the first ten where they lay.Then Satu chose Boko to go away out of sight and hearing of the game, and Mpoko and his players consulted as to which the “playing seed” was. In throwing the seeds, Satu had tried not to call attention to pungati, the seventh seed, in any way, and had told his players not to seem to be watching it when he threw it. They did not. They were so very, very careless just at that moment that Mpoko wondered if that were not the “playing seed.” He took note where it fell and saw that it lay near a little hump in the ground. When he told his players what he thought, they said that he was likely to be right, and when he picked up the seventh seed and said, “This is the playing seed and its name is pungati,” Satu admitted that it was and that Mpoko had won.Of course, if Satu and his side were dishonest players they might deny that the seed picked up was the playing seed. But that would do them no good, for Boko, who had been sent out of sight and hearing, was a check on them. How the check worked was shown when Mpoko in his turn threw the seed. This time the third seed, tatu, was the “playing seed.” It was the turn of Satu’s side to guess, and they disagreed. Satu thought it was the fifth, and the others were divided between the third and the sixth. In the end they took a chance, and Satu, picking up the fifth seed, said, “This is the playing seed, and its name is tano.” But it wasn’t the playing seed.Still, Satu’s side had one more chance. Mpoko had sent Nkula out of sight and hearing before the discussion began, and Nkula would have to come back and pick up the playing seed, depending on his memory of the way in which the seeds lay when he left the circle. Mpoko touched tatu, the playing seed, and then called Nkula back. Everybody watched, breathless. If Nkula touched the wrong seed, Satu’s side would still win. But he didn’t. Nkula had a good memory, and he remembered that tatu, the playing seed, lay at one end of a line of three,the only three seeds close together in a straight line. He picked it up and said, “This is the playing seed, and its name is tatu.”It will be seen that it is almost impossible to cheat in this game. If Satu had really picked up the right seed, and Mpoko had denied that he did, then when Nkula came back there would have been no right seed on the ground; and if Mpoko pointed to the wrong seed, the chances were all against Nkula’s guessing that one seed, out of the thirty-nine still remaining on the ground.The old hunters who were looking on very much approved of this game, which they had played when they were boys, and their fathers and grandfathers before them. A good player must have a quick eye and a good memory, both of which are most needful in hunting. As the Bantu proverb has it, “For a running antelope one needs a running shot.”The next game, Mbele, or the Knife, trained not only the eye but the limbs, and was sometimes played by boys and girls alike. All the players stood in line, Satu at the head and Mpoko next him. Satu stepped out and faced Mpoko, and holding up both hands waved them about, and then shot out one hand quickly.Mpoko countered with the corresponding hand. This was done three times, and the third time Mpoko missed, for he was in too much of a hurry and answered the wrong gesture. Nkula, who came next, failed also; but in Boko, Satu met his match, and Boko became “King” in his turn, while Satu went to the foot of the line. If the King could go down the line without meeting his match, the last one in the line would be called a slave, and would go out. Sometimes—so Mpoko’s father told them—Satu’s father, as King, had gone up and down the line until all the other players were slaves.Games such as these not only teach the players to move promptly, see correctly and remember what they see, but give them practice in judging by the expression of a person’s face what he is about to do or what he is thinking. When a boy trained in games of the wits, like these, grows up and becomes a chief or a trader, it is very hard for any one to deceive him, or to read his face when he does not wish his thoughts to be known. They are also games which must be played fairly if there is to be any fun in them.Besides playing their games, the boys wrestled, ran races, had contests in high jumping, and did as much bragging and arguing as is usualin a crowd of boys on a three days’ holiday. On the third day the boys from Satu’s village and Mpoko and his friends got into an argument, and there was a quarrel which attracted the attention of the fathers and led to punishment.That evening Mpoko remembered something. He sidled over to the Alo Man, who was just then sitting by himself mending a marimba, and said, “What is the story about the People with the Bandaged Faces?”“Ho!” said the Alo Man. “Do you think that fashion is a good one?”“I don’t know,” said Mpoko. “I should like to see some people with their faces bandaged.”“Perhaps they might like to see you with yours bandaged, too,” said the Alo Man. “However, this is the story.”Once the Rabbit went on a long journey, and lost his way. When he had wandered a long time he came to a town where there was a market place, but the market place was very still. There were many people, wearing bandages of white cloth over their faces, who were coming and going and exchanging their produce for brass rods, mirrors, trader’s cloth, and ivorytrumpets. But none of them said a single word.“Ho!” said the Rabbit, “this is a very queer place. Curious kind of people these must be.”He spoke to one and another, asking for food and oil and offering to pay, but although they gave him all that he needed and took his beads in payment, not one of them said a word in reply.It was so queer in that place that the Rabbit began to be frightened, and at last he left the market place and went on, looking back over his shoulder until he was out of sight. When he came to a house he found an old man, and he asked the old man what was the matter with the people of that market, who went and came and bought and sold, and never said a word.“That is their custom,” said the old man. “A long time ago they got into the habit of quarreling and arguing with one another until nobody had any peace from morning till night. Each market day it was worse than the last. Finally the King heard of it and was angry with them for their foolishness, and he made a law that in that village, when the people went to market, each must leave his lower jaw at home.”
Mpokoand Nkunda could not remember any feast which was so great a feast as the one that celebrated the killing of the elephants. The preparation of food and the cooking of it took nearly every dish, pot, and pan to be found in the village. Some of these were of wood, some of iron, some of pottery, and some of basket-work. The framework of the baskets used for food was sometimes of wood, with thin strips of cane or narrow splints woven in and out, and maybe a wooden rim. Sometimes the white wood used for baskets and dishes was stained black, and a pattern was cut out by carving away the black surface, leaving a raised black decoration on white. Baskets could be so closely woven that they would hold milk. Some were made in the form of a demijohn, or bottle, and covered with rubber-like juice to make them water-tight, and these were generally used to hold beer.
The pottery used at the feast was partly plain and partly decorated. Cooking pots and porridge pots were straight-sided. Beer pots wereshaped like an egg with a hole in the end. Water jars were made oval with a spreading top, and there were round pots to hold the fat, salt, and spices used in cooking. Some of this ware was colored red with oxide of iron, and some was covered with a black glaze. It was made by hand, without any potter’s wheel, dried in the sun, and then burned in a wood fire.
The making of the round dishes or cups called calabashes was even simpler. Some of them were made of gourds with the inside scooped out, and some were picked off a tree as they were. The curious tree called the baobab, which is one of the silk-cotton family of trees, bears a large, gourdlike fruit which the natives call monkey-bread. The shell is about the right size and shape for dishes, bowls, and cups.
pottery
One of the most important articles needed for the feast was palm oil, and it was good that there was a large supply on hand. In so hot a climate, with no ice or ice-boxes, it is out of thequestion to keep butter for use in cooking. The palm oil is used for various purposes in cooking in place of butter, fat, lard, or olive oil. It is made from the fruit of the oil palm, which is an olive-shaped, plumlike fruit with a kernel inside a thick, fleshy outer envelope. The fruit grows in long red and yellow clusters. When the men have climbed up the palm tree and brought down the bunches, the fruits are cut off the main stem and cooked in water until they are soft and the kernel is loosened from the pulp. Then this pulp is pounded in a large mortar to free the kernels, which are put aside in a pile, and the thick, orange-colored, oily mass is dumped into a hollow log of wood like a trough. The log rests on crossed sticks sothat it slopes at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and a pan or jar is set under the lower end to receive the oil. Hot stones are mixed with the pulp, and the oil, thinned by the heat, runs down into the jar. Sometimes the kernels are eaten, and sometimes they are pounded up to make more oil.
making butter
Palm oil was used for other things besides cooking. It could be burned in a homemade lamp,—an earthen dish with a floating wick,—and it was used for any ordinary purpose for which oil is used. Finally, it served the purpose of cold cream in massaging and oiling the skin. Before a feast, or after any great exertion, it was always used in this way, and the dancers who were to entertain the company began quite early to rub one another’s limbs with oil from the little ornamental dishes of palm oil. However, there was plenty of oil for all these uses, without touching the supply in jars that would be carried to the coast traders, to be used in some far-away factory for making soap or candles.
Presently the guests began to gather and the musicians to play. Besides the drums with their boom! boom! boom! there were several other instruments—the sansi, a kind of woodenpiano or xylophone, the marimba, another form of the same thing, flutes made of hollow reed, and a guitar-like instrument with the body of it covered with skin. The dancers soon assembled, and the rattles tied to their ankles and the clapping of the hands of the spectators kept time to the wild music. This entertainment would go on all night, probably for two or three nights.
musical instruments
When it was time for the feast to begin, girls and boys went about first of all with water in calabashes and jars, that every one might rinse out his mouth and wash his hands before eating. Mpoko and Nkunda had been taught always to do this before a meal, and they had also a kind of wooden toothbrush which kept the teeth cleaner, if anything, than the ones sold in shops. Some people say that the care which these tribes take of their teeth is thereason why they usually have such very white and sound ones.
The men and women did not eat together. The principal men were served first, and after they had taken what they chose from the dishes, the women and children had the rest in their turn. Meat and gravy were cooked in one dish, dumplings, kwanga, or cooked rice were served in another, vegetables in another. The people ate with their fingers. A lump of kwanga, dumpling, bread, or cooked rice was taken in the fingers and dipped in the broth. The dumpling was swallowed whole; it could not be chewed, as it would stick to the teeth like so much glue, but it would slip down whole like an oyster. Groups of friends or relatives ate together, and good breeding was shown in the special care which every well-brought-up guest would take, to eat no more than his proper share. Greediness is very unpopular among the Bantu, and any unfair division of food is regarded as the worst possible manners.
During the days that the feast lasted, appetites were saved up for the evening meal, and nobody ate anything during the day except perhaps a little fruit, a handful of peanuts, or some sugar-cane juice. The Alo Man toldtales, there was much dancing and singing, naps were taken at any time of day by those who were sleepy, and the children played many games. The children often made almost as much noise as the grown people, for the boys had a band of their own. Nkula, who had a biti—a kind of marimba—which he had made for himself, was leader.
A game that was a general favorite was played with the biti and the other instruments, and a needle. In playing it, the boys divided into two camps, Mpoko being captain of one, and Satu, a boy from a neighboring village, of the other. Boko, one of Mpoko’s players, was sent out of sight and hearing, and Mpoko then took a needle—a rather large bone needle used for raffia or sinew—and hid it so that both camps would know where it was. Meanwhile Satu’s camp had agreed upon a certain note in the scale played on the biti, which should be the “guiding note.” Then Boko was called back to hunt for the needle. When he came near the needle, the player of the biti, Nkula, who was in Satu’s camp, must sound the guiding note, mixing it up with as many variations and other notes as he could, and when Boko moved away from the needle, the guiding note mustnot be sounded. Of course, if Nkula did not keep to this rule Mpoko’s side would make trouble for him. To win for his side, Boko must not only find the needle but must name the guiding note.
Boko had a quick ear, and he was a shrewd boy. Within two or three minutes he was nearly sure where the needle was, but he was not certain about the guiding note. Satu’s side made such a racket that all the notes in the scale seemed to be part of it. Mpoko felt more than once like calling out “Otuama” (you are warm) when Boko stopped two or three times almost on top of the needle, but of course that would never do. Then Boko walked across the ground and came back, went straight to the hiding place, picked up the needle, and sounded the correct guiding note!
After they had kept quiet, watching the search for the needle, as long as active boys could, they played the game called “antelope.” Boko, having won in the last game, was antelope. A line was scratched on the ground, marking out a large court, and all the boys except Boko got down on all fours with their faces uplifted. They were the hunters, and they tried to touch Boko with their hands, or kick him with their feet,or butt him with their heads, or pen him up between them and the boundary line. Since they had to chase him on all fours, Boko had an advantage, and once he jumped right over a hunter who almost had him. When they finally did get him hemmed in and he ran out of the ring, they all got on their feet and chased him, and Nkula, the first to touch him, was antelope in his turn.
Some of the smaller children were playing a game of their own, under a bush where the fowls had been having a dust bath. The large, black, glossyloso(canna seeds) were used in this game. While one player went out, the others hid a canna seed in one of five little heaps of dirt. The searcher had to sweep away the four heaps that did not hold any seed, and leave untouched the heap that did. If he guessed correctly, it counted one game for his side.
When they were tired of “antelope,” the older boys played a rather difficult memory game, called “loso,” with forty canna seeds. Satu and Mpoko chose sides, and all sat on the ground around an open space. Satu, taking twenty seeds in each hand, led the play. His side had agreed beforehand that the seventh seed thrownshould be the “playing seed,” and the other side would have to guess which it was, and pick it up. Satu threw first a seed from the right hand, then one from the left, counting aloud as he threw until he had thrown ten all together—solo, beri, tatu, inno, tano, tandatu, pungati, inani, kenda, ikundi. Then he threw down the other seeds helter skelter, without counting, but so as not to disturb the first ten where they lay.
Then Satu chose Boko to go away out of sight and hearing of the game, and Mpoko and his players consulted as to which the “playing seed” was. In throwing the seeds, Satu had tried not to call attention to pungati, the seventh seed, in any way, and had told his players not to seem to be watching it when he threw it. They did not. They were so very, very careless just at that moment that Mpoko wondered if that were not the “playing seed.” He took note where it fell and saw that it lay near a little hump in the ground. When he told his players what he thought, they said that he was likely to be right, and when he picked up the seventh seed and said, “This is the playing seed and its name is pungati,” Satu admitted that it was and that Mpoko had won.
Of course, if Satu and his side were dishonest players they might deny that the seed picked up was the playing seed. But that would do them no good, for Boko, who had been sent out of sight and hearing, was a check on them. How the check worked was shown when Mpoko in his turn threw the seed. This time the third seed, tatu, was the “playing seed.” It was the turn of Satu’s side to guess, and they disagreed. Satu thought it was the fifth, and the others were divided between the third and the sixth. In the end they took a chance, and Satu, picking up the fifth seed, said, “This is the playing seed, and its name is tano.” But it wasn’t the playing seed.
Still, Satu’s side had one more chance. Mpoko had sent Nkula out of sight and hearing before the discussion began, and Nkula would have to come back and pick up the playing seed, depending on his memory of the way in which the seeds lay when he left the circle. Mpoko touched tatu, the playing seed, and then called Nkula back. Everybody watched, breathless. If Nkula touched the wrong seed, Satu’s side would still win. But he didn’t. Nkula had a good memory, and he remembered that tatu, the playing seed, lay at one end of a line of three,the only three seeds close together in a straight line. He picked it up and said, “This is the playing seed, and its name is tatu.”
It will be seen that it is almost impossible to cheat in this game. If Satu had really picked up the right seed, and Mpoko had denied that he did, then when Nkula came back there would have been no right seed on the ground; and if Mpoko pointed to the wrong seed, the chances were all against Nkula’s guessing that one seed, out of the thirty-nine still remaining on the ground.
The old hunters who were looking on very much approved of this game, which they had played when they were boys, and their fathers and grandfathers before them. A good player must have a quick eye and a good memory, both of which are most needful in hunting. As the Bantu proverb has it, “For a running antelope one needs a running shot.”
The next game, Mbele, or the Knife, trained not only the eye but the limbs, and was sometimes played by boys and girls alike. All the players stood in line, Satu at the head and Mpoko next him. Satu stepped out and faced Mpoko, and holding up both hands waved them about, and then shot out one hand quickly.Mpoko countered with the corresponding hand. This was done three times, and the third time Mpoko missed, for he was in too much of a hurry and answered the wrong gesture. Nkula, who came next, failed also; but in Boko, Satu met his match, and Boko became “King” in his turn, while Satu went to the foot of the line. If the King could go down the line without meeting his match, the last one in the line would be called a slave, and would go out. Sometimes—so Mpoko’s father told them—Satu’s father, as King, had gone up and down the line until all the other players were slaves.
Games such as these not only teach the players to move promptly, see correctly and remember what they see, but give them practice in judging by the expression of a person’s face what he is about to do or what he is thinking. When a boy trained in games of the wits, like these, grows up and becomes a chief or a trader, it is very hard for any one to deceive him, or to read his face when he does not wish his thoughts to be known. They are also games which must be played fairly if there is to be any fun in them.
Besides playing their games, the boys wrestled, ran races, had contests in high jumping, and did as much bragging and arguing as is usualin a crowd of boys on a three days’ holiday. On the third day the boys from Satu’s village and Mpoko and his friends got into an argument, and there was a quarrel which attracted the attention of the fathers and led to punishment.
That evening Mpoko remembered something. He sidled over to the Alo Man, who was just then sitting by himself mending a marimba, and said, “What is the story about the People with the Bandaged Faces?”
“Ho!” said the Alo Man. “Do you think that fashion is a good one?”
“I don’t know,” said Mpoko. “I should like to see some people with their faces bandaged.”
“Perhaps they might like to see you with yours bandaged, too,” said the Alo Man. “However, this is the story.”
Once the Rabbit went on a long journey, and lost his way. When he had wandered a long time he came to a town where there was a market place, but the market place was very still. There were many people, wearing bandages of white cloth over their faces, who were coming and going and exchanging their produce for brass rods, mirrors, trader’s cloth, and ivorytrumpets. But none of them said a single word.
“Ho!” said the Rabbit, “this is a very queer place. Curious kind of people these must be.”
He spoke to one and another, asking for food and oil and offering to pay, but although they gave him all that he needed and took his beads in payment, not one of them said a word in reply.
It was so queer in that place that the Rabbit began to be frightened, and at last he left the market place and went on, looking back over his shoulder until he was out of sight. When he came to a house he found an old man, and he asked the old man what was the matter with the people of that market, who went and came and bought and sold, and never said a word.
“That is their custom,” said the old man. “A long time ago they got into the habit of quarreling and arguing with one another until nobody had any peace from morning till night. Each market day it was worse than the last. Finally the King heard of it and was angry with them for their foolishness, and he made a law that in that village, when the people went to market, each must leave his lower jaw at home.”