AFRICAN FOLKTALE: THE LIGHTNING AND THE THUNDER

IN the olden days the
thunder and lightning lived on the earth amongst all the other people, but the
king made them live at the far end of the town, as far as possible from other
people’s houses.

The thunder was an old
mother sheep, and the lightning was her son, a ram. Whenever the ram got angry
he used to go about and burn houses and knock down trees; he even did damage on
the farms, and sometimes killed people. Whenever the lightning did these
things, his mother used to call out to him in a very loud voice to stop and not
to do any more damage; but the lightning did not care in the least for what his
mother said, and when he was in a bad temper used to do a very large amount of
damage. At last the people could not stand it any longer, and complained to the
king.

So the king made a
special order that the sheep (Thunder) and her son, the ram (Lightning), should
leave the town and live in the far bush. This did not do much good, as when the
ram got angry he still burnt the forest, and the flames sometimes spread to the
farms and consumed them.

So the people complained
again, and the king banished both the lightning and the thunder from the earth
and made them live in the sky, where they could not cause so much destruction.
Ever since, when the lightning is angry, he commits damage as before, but you
can hear his mother, the thunder, rebuking him and telling him to stop.
Sometimes, however, when the mother has gone away some distance from her
naughty son, you can still see that he is angry and is doing damage, but his
mother’s voice cannot be heard.

As Narrated by Johnson Okunade