FOLKTALES

   SISTERS

          Once there lived a Couple who had two daughters. One fine day the parents told the eldest daughter to kill her sister and prepare her sister's flesh for the meal. They went for their daily chores. The elder one made the younger one to sleep in the ancient resting place and told her to cover herself with a shawl. Not knowing the trick her sister obeyed her. But whenever the elder one tried to hit her the younger one would ask what she was trying to do. The elder one would reply, "I am plauing".

        She tried many times to kill her sister but each time she failed. When their parents came they asked their eldest daughter whether she had killed her sister. She replied that she was not able to kill. When they heard this they were annoyed with their daughter.

       Then they themselves tried to kill their youngest daughter but she managed to escape from their clutches. They started chasing her and her elder sister guided them to catch her. She kept guiding them correctly but at one moment she led them into a different direction. At one moment the father and mother met together and the husband killed his wife. The youngest sister was excited to see that her mother been killed for she did not understand what was happening.

         They took their mother's body home and one day their father prepared the mother's breast for a meal. The eldest daughter was indignant to eat her mother's breast meat and in order to escape from the scolding from her father she packed the meat in the banana leaf and went to the field. As soon as she reached the field, she cried bitterly and buried it in a corner of the field where she could easily identify the place.

         Some days later when she went back to the field she saw s beautiful plant in bloom where she had buried the meat. She would frequently visit this spot and shed tears thinking of her mother. Her father was baffled by her daughter's swollen eyes and felt suspicious. Whenever he asked her about her swollen eyes she would remain silent and this made her father even more suspicious. He found that her condition was the same whenever she was sent to the paddy field. One day he sent her to the field and followed you her from behind. When she reached the field she went to the corner where there was s plant in bloom and she began to cry and weep before the flowers. He became more curious at seeing this strange sight.

           When she returned home, her father came out from his hiding place and started to cut down the plant thinking to himself that the plant was making her daughter sad. After a few days when she returned to the field she did not find the flower but the stem of the plant spoke to her saying, "I told you not to bring your father, but you brought him and now I am like this". She went home sad.

            After a month or month or two, the stem sprouted new shoots and began to flower again. The flower was extremely beautiful and people started calling it Ahiehie Kiiwuh.