Episode 33 – The Lion Sleeps Tonight – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 33 Show Notes

Source: African Folklore

This week on MYTH, we’re off to the African savannah for a lion hunt. You’ll learn that just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean you’re wrong, that using children as bait is a fantastic idea, and that lions aren’t supposed to own cows. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll go under the sea to meet an ancient African mermaid who’s not nearly as friendly as Ariel. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 33, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
This week’s story comes from a collection of traditional tales from Zimbabwe and Botswana, The Girl who Married a Lion by Alexander McCall Smith. All of the stories in the collection are fantastic, and I highly recommend getting a copy of the book if you’re interested in diving into more of the fascinating stories from southern Africa. But for now, it’s story time, boys and girls.
Kumalo was a moderately wealthy man, and his daughter was known as a great beauty. Kumalo and his wife had worried about finding a husband who was good enough for their daughter and also interesting enough to catch her eye. On the day she married, nearly everyone in the village was happy. Kumalo was happy that his new son-in-law had been able to gather such an impressive herd of cattle as a dowry; Kumalo’s wife was happy that she no longer had to worry about the kind of man her daughter would end up marrying; Kumalo’s daughter was pleased that she had found such a kind, handsome, sexy man for her husband.
In fact, the only person who wasn’t happy was Kumalo’s son. “Why aren’t you happy, man? Your sister has a fine husband!” The young man shook his head and sighed. “No, my friends, she has not. My sister has married a lion.” “Um, no, that’s definitely a man.” “No, it’s a lion. He’s just disguised to look like a human. I don’t know why no one else sees it.”
No one quite knew what to make of this strange statement, so his friends just let it go. They figured he was just jealous of their relationship (and maybe a little crazy), so they laughed it off. “That’s a weird thought, but whatever, I guess. What did he say when you told him that he’s a lion in disguise?” “I haven’t told him. I haven’t said anything at all to him, in fact. How can I? He’s a lion! I will not talk to the lion that stole my baby sister.” The family was…less than pleased that the brother was being rude to his sister’s new husband, but they decided it wasn’t worth pressing the issue. This was a wedding after all, so there was no need to ruin a happy affair with one man’s sour grapes. They figured he’d get over whatever it was in a few days.
Except he didn’t. Years went by, and his sister had two strong sons, each as handsome as their father, which most would have taken as proof that her husband was human, but not the brother. “Fuck him, I know he’s a goddamned lion in disguise. I know it!” Even with two nephews, the man still refused to have anything to do with his brother-in-law, refused to even speak to him.
After it became clear that not even births were going to change the brother’s mind, Kumalo went over to speak with his son. “Come on, son. You’re being incredibly rude to your brother-in-law. I don’t know what your issue with him is, but you need to get over it. At least talk to him for your sister’s sake if not for mine.” “Dad, you know what my issue with him is: he’s a lion disguised as a man.” “Not this shit again. Don’t be ridiculous, son. He’s clearly not a lion. I mean, just look at all of the cattle he gave me as a bride gift when they married. Where would a lion get so many cows?” “I don’t know, dad. I don’t know where he got the cattle, but he’s still a damned lion.”
No one could change his mind about his brother-in-law being a lion, and soon they quit trying. It was like Bojack Horseman trying to convince Princess Caroline that her boyfriend is two kids stacked on top of one another (and if you haven’t seen that show yet, shame on you). For his part, the brother was certain that a lion could only be pulling a trick like this for some nefarious purpose. He was sure that some shit would go down sooner or later, and he was resolved to be ready for the trouble when it came. More time passed, and the two boys were big, strong, and healthy, when the man’s sister came to speak to him in private.
“I need your help, bro. I wasn’t sure who else to turn to.” “What’s going on?” “It’s…it’s my husband. He has a weird smell to him. I didn’t know who else to talk to about this. I figured everyone else would tell me I was being overly sensitive, but since I know you don’t like him, I figured you might listen.” The man took his sister’s hand. “You were right to come to me. I’m here to help. Now, you say he has a strange smell? Strange how?” “I don’t know how to describe it. He doesn’t smell like anyone else I’ve ever met. It’s just…strange.”
“Hmm, that’s not much to go on. Since you can’t describe the smell, maybe I need to smell it for myself. How about I come over to the house on a day when he’s not going to be there, and I can smell some of his things. They should hold enough of his scent for me to get an idea of what the smell is, I think.” “He’s actually gone all day today. That’s why I came to see you. I didn’t want him to know what I was thinking, in case it turns out to be nothing.” “Fair enough. Let’s go now.”
They headed over to the woman’s house, where her two sons slept peacefully. She grabbed some of his dirty clothes that hadn’t yet been washed. She took a whiff, and nodded. “This has the smell. Here.” She handed it over, and her brother took a huge breath. It was a musky scent, wild and feral. It was also one he had smelled before. “I knew it. I fucking knew it! That, dear sister, is lion smell. This shirt reeks of the smell of lions. I’ve smelled it before when I’ve stumbled across one of the lion dens where a male lion was sleeping the afternoon heat away. This is definitely a lion smell.” The sister nodded. She had suspected as much, but she was hoping she was crazy. Now that her fear had been confirmed, she decided that the two of them needed to go talk to their father about this. He wasn’t going to be happy.
The siblings were right. Their father wasn’t happy. “This shit again? Son, I don’t know why you are so fixated on this crazy idea, but your brother-in-law is not a lion!” “I’m not so sure, papa. He smells like a wild animal, and my brother is convinced that the smell is lion smell. I’m worried, papa.” Kumalo sighed. If both of them were on this crazy train, he wasn’t going to be able to derail it easily. “Alright, you two, alright. It’s obvious I can’t talk you out of this, so how about I prove it instead?” “How, dad? How are you going to prove whether he’s a lion?”
His plan was simple, elegant, and absolutely wouldn’t prove a damned thing in real life. “We’ll get a goat and, after he goes to sleep, we’ll tie it up outside of the hut. If, in the morning, the goat is gone, that will prove it’s been eaten by a lion, and so he must be a lion.” Now, I can find all kinds of ways that this could go wrong and generate a bad result (if he is a lion, he could just not be hungry; if he’s not a lion, something else could wander by and eat the goat in the night; and those are just off the top of my head). Despite the plan’s flaws, everyone got on board and decided it was a great idea.
That night, Kumalo and his son snuck out in the darkness and tied a goat up to a stake outside the door of the hut. From inside, they could hear the loud snores of the suspected lion. Satisfied that the knot would hold and that the goat couldn’t just wander off, they went back home to get some sleep. In the morning, they returned to the hut as the first rays of dawn were painting the land to find that the goat was, indeed, missing. The stake was still there, and most of the rope, but the fibres had been ripped at the end and were now stained in what was unmistakably blood. Oh, and the ground was also littered with bloody goat bones. They were pretty sure the goat had been eaten in the night, and it hadn’t been carried off to be eaten, so it does seem like the poor goat (i keep seeing that scene in Jurassic Park) was eaten right outside the hut.
The son pointed triumphantly at the bloody mess. “I told you! I fucking told you! ‘He’s not a lion! You’re crazy!’ Well who’s crazy now, dad?” Kumalo stared at the bones. “I mean, maybe he just got hungry in the night?” “Are you serious, dad? No human being would eat a goat like this. This goat was ripped apart. This is clearly a lion’s work.” The old man really, really wanted to argue, but the grisly mess was hard to argue with. “Yeah, okay. This is really fucking weird, but I don’t see any other explanation. It seems my daughter has, in fact, married a lion.” He sighed heavily. “Let’s go get our spears, son. Since he’s a lion, he’s too dangerous to stay in the village. We need to chase him off, preferably before he realizes we’re here.” “Shouldn’t we just kill him?” “I…I just can’t do that. He’s been good to your sister, for all that he is a lion, and he’s still my son-in-law. No, let’s just drive him off.”
The two men raced to get their weapons, and then rushed back. Inside, they could still hear the massive snores of the sleeping, disguised lion. At a signal, both rushed inside brandishing their spears. “Hey, asshole! We know that you’re a lion. You can’t stay here! Get out! Get out of the village!” The son-in-law was angry and confused, and he tried to resist being herded out of his home and his new village, but he was unarmed, so he could do nothing against the sharp spears confronting him. With a snarl, he turned and ran off into the brush and was gone. The two men didn’t relax. Cautiously, they crept to the bushes to verify that he wasn’t waiting to spring a nasty surprise, but he was really gone. As they turned to comfort his now abandoned sort-of widow, they saw footprints in the earth that clearly belonged to the clawed foot of a lion and not a man. If there had been any doubt, it was gone now.
The daughter was understandably upset at suddenly finding herself a single mother, and she had no idea what she was going to tell people; she couldn’t very well tell the village that her family had driven her husband off for being a lion! Still, she knew it was for the best. He’d been good to her, true, but if he had lost his temper, he could have eaten her! It was simply too dangerous to keep living with a disguised lion.
The two men had thought that, with the lion gone, the matter was over with. The son in particular had expected his sister to be happy to have her fears confirmed and dealt with, but she soon came to see him in private again. “Okay, so, you were right about my husband being a lion, but have you considered what that means?” He stared at his sister blankly. “I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at.” “My husband was a lion. I have two sons with him. If my sons’ father was a lion, what are they?”
Her brother considered this. He…he hadn’t even thought about what it meant to have half lion/half human babies. Would they also grow up to be lions? He loved his nephews, and he would be heartbroken if they turned out to be dangerous wild animals at the end of the day. Both siblings walked over to stare at the two sleeping boys. “I dunno, sis. They don’t look like lions.” “Neither did their father. How can we know?” “You’re right. We’ll need to be absolutely sure before we do anything. I think we need to test them, but in a more rigorous manner. I don’t want to make any mistakes with your sons.” “Okay, brother, what did you have in mind?” “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.” He told her his idea, and again, he was right; she didn’t like it. In the end, neither of them could come up with a better way to test the boys, so she nervously agreed to let him proceed.
He went out into the brush and gathered many, many thin trees and branches, as well as stout, sturdy vines. From these, he fashioned a cage about 4 feet on each side. Once it was complete, he took it out into the wild, carrying it until he came to the place he sought. It was a well-worn animal run thick with the stink of predator. From his time spent hunting for food out here, he knew that the lions frequently used this path from their dens to the local watering hole. There weren’t any here at the moment, but it was only a matter of time.
He set the cage down near the path, and then jogged back to the village. After a tearful goodbye and many hugs from their mother, the man took his nephews with him out into the wild. He led them to the cage and opened the crude door. “Alright, boys, in you go.” They looked at him. “You want us to get into the cage? Why?” “I’m testing it out. I need to see if it is strong enough to give protection from a lion. I already talked to your mother, and she said it’s okay if you two help me out.” The two boys weren’t entirely sanguine about this plan, but they trusted their mother and their uncle, so they did as they were told and climbed inside.
There was enough room for both boys to sit comfortably, but they could only stand in a crouch. “What now, Uncle?” “Now? Now I go home to do some work. I’ll be back tonight to see if the cage is still intact. Good luck, boys!” And with that, he turned on his heel and walked back into the trees and out of sight. The younger of the two brothers immediately got scared and began to cry. Honestly, I don’t blame him. I’d be fucking terrified of being left alone in the wilderness as lion bait. His older brother tried to comfort him. “Don’t worry, bro. Our uncle is a good man, and he wouldn’t be doing this if we were in any real danger. He must be very sure that the cage is strong enough.” That satisfied the younger boy enough to downgrade his wails to quiet sniffles and sobs.
The uncle had said he was going to just abandon them there, but he wasn’t actually a heartless monster. As soon as he was out of sight, he had snuck back to a place where he could watch everything from hiding. That whole song and dance about leaving had been to throw off his lion brother-in-law on the off chance that he was close enough to listen in. He didn’t want the lions realizing that there was anything amiss or the test wouldn’t be accurate. He settled down in the crook of a low tree and waited.
After an uneventful half hour, the uncle could see two lions coming down the path towards the watering hole. He watched silently as the two lions padded over to the cage and began to sniff at the tasty treats inside. The two boys, justifiably terrified, cowered in a corner as far from the lions as they could get, screaming and crying. The lions roared in response to the boys’ wails, and began to paw at the cage. One of them backed up a few steps, then charged the cage with its shoulder, trying to break the thin wood under its weight.
The uncle figured that if he let this go on much longer, he was going to have to explain to his sister why he let her two little boys be eaten by lions. Leaping out of the tree, he raced down to the cage, yelling and brandishing the spear he’d left here in secret when he’d brought the cage. The two lions, startled by the noise and familiar enough with spears to be wary of them, decided that this meal was more trouble than it was worth and hurried off.
He opened the door to the cage and let the two boys out, then led them home. Their mother let out a cry of joy when she saw them and rushed to gather the two boys into her arms. “Your sons are not lions, sister. When the two lions saw them in the cage, they tried to eat them. If they were lions, like their father, the lions would have smelled the lion on them and not tried to eat them.” “I’m glad my boys are my boys!” She hugged them close for a long, long time.
I’m not really sure what we’re supposed to take away from this story. For the first half of the tale, the brother comes off as an unreasonable, rude dickhead, except it turns out he was completely right about his insane theory. Then, in spite of the fact that the disguised lion has been a good father and husband up to this point, everyone agrees that he’s different, which makes him dangerous, and they drive him off and are fully prepared to abandon the children too if they prove too different. It’s not a terribly uplifting message, but that’s sometimes how these old stories go, which means it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s goddess is Mami Wata.
The deity known as Mami Wata has roots and offshoots in a number of different gods and magical beings throughout Africa and Mesopotamia. Mami Wata, roughly translated as Wisdom of the Ocean or Wise Woman (and the similarity to the English phrase Mama Water is entirely coincidental as the words predate European colonial activity), is a half human water deity, symbolizing the juxtaposition of dualities. Mami Wata has the upper body of a human (usually female and usually nude), and the lower half of a fish or a serpent, although in some stories, she is fully human in appearance.
She often carries expensive items, such as combs, mirror and watches, and is often accompanied by a massive snake (a symbol of her divine nature and her ability to see the truth), which often wraps itself around her in glistening coils, laying its head between her breasts. She can manifest as fully human to wander through markets or bars on secret business, and can even appear as a man should she so choose.
Although similar to the western mermaid, Mami Watu can be found in the creation myths of the Dogon tribe, with records of her story dating back to 4000 years ago. She is an ancient and powerful goddess, as complicated and vital as the sea itself. Strikingly beautiful, the goddess provides spiritual and physical healing to her followers, and also serves as a guardian for their emotional and mental health. She is also the defender of important bodies of water, and to this day, some traditional groups in Africa will not go to the beach or go fishing on certain days in order to give Mami Watu a day off to relax in her watery home.
As a female ocean goddess, she is a deity of fertility as well as a protector of women and children, and is known to have a particular soft spot for women who have been abused. She can provide wealth and beauty to the children of her followers if they are loyal, but like the ocean she embodies, the goddess has a dark side. It is said that she stalks the shores of the ocean to abduct men and women (but mostly men) while they are swimming or traveling by boat in her demesne. If she finds them worthy, they will be returned to shore unharmed and completely dry with a new perspective on spirituality and religion that can make them rich, attractive, and famous. If not, her captives are drowned in the depths of the sea.
Mami Watu was originally confined to Africa, but with the diaspora of the African peoples, primarily as a result of the horrors of slavery, she has crossed the Atlantic and made a home in the US, South America, and the Caribbean. Many of the slave ships that sunk during that awful journey were said to be destroyed by Mami Watu at the behest of her followers who had been kidnapped and chained in the holds in appalling conditions.
As a fertility goddess, she also has a healthy sexual appetite, which is why more men get taken by her. She has been known to leave her comb or mirror lying around in ports for sailors to find. If a man picks these items up, Mami Watu would invade their dreams and ask for the return of her beloved baubles in return for mind-blowing goddess sex. Sometimes, these sailors are returned unharmed and satisfied, but often their bodies are later found floating in the ocean (if they’re ever seen again at all). Sometimes, she picks up men in the bars or markets as a prostitute and only reveals herself after they fuck, and demands eternal loyalty and secrecy from the men. If they are stupid enough to refuse a literal goddess, they suffer poverty, destruction of his family (if he was married and cheated on his wife with this strange woman, which is total victim blaming), or even instant death. Like many ocean gods, she has a fickle temper and a powerful jealousy, which can easily lead the unsuspecting mortals to their doom. Women who are boastful or over proud of their beauty are often targeted by Mami Watu, and cursed with solitude or infertility until they beg forgiveness of the deity and mend their wicked ways. So if an impossibly beautiful prostitute with a comb, a watch, or a mirror approaches you for casual sex, take care that she’s not actually a disguised goddess, or instead of getting crotch crabs, you could end up with actual crabs eating your drowned body.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll play Indiana Jones and get into some real Temple of Doom shit. You’ll discover that a clumsy god is the reason short people exist, that hell quails are real bastards, and that the moon is actually something a lot grosser than stinky cheese. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll see that John Hughes ain’t got shit on a Guatemalan boogeyman. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.