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British Guiana - The Old Woman Who Died Of Shame
A very old woman once took her little grandson with her into the bush to gather honey. She looked up at a tree, and, seeing some bees coming in and out of a hole, told the boy she was going to climb it. Now, as these were biting [stinging] bees, she told him also that she intended blowing into the hole so as to keep the insects quiet. When, however, she reached a convenient height, and commenced blowing, she soon recognized that she was dealing with wasps, not bees. She got terribly stung, and in beating a hasty retreat, her foot slipped, her kuyu [apron-belt] caught on a small projecting branch, and she fell naked to the ground. Of course, she did not dare go home in that state, and so her grandson shot an arrow into the apron, hanging a long way up on the tree, and brought it down for her. They went back home, and the old woman told the child on no account to tell his parents what had happened, because she was so afraid of being laughed at. Thus it was that she always kept the little boy near her, lest he should talk about the incident. One day, however, the youngster slipped away to his father and mother, and told them of the old grandmother's adventure with the wasps, and how she had come down the tree without her clothes. They roared with laughter as the little boy mimicked the old woman's actions. The poor old soul heard them both laughing, and began to cry for very shame; and she cried so long that she died.
Footnote:
1 The maraka-bakuru is a small detached house, in which in the olden times the Warru house-master would keep his arrows, clubs, tools, and implements, and other knickknacks.
An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-Lore of the Guiana Indians, Walter E. Roth, from the Thirtieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1908-1909, pp. 103-386, Washington D.C., 1915, and is now in the public domain.[ British Guiana ][ South America ]
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