Mwaliye.
A man once sent his relations through the country to find a wife for him. After many and long journeyings they found a very beautiful girl. Her mother consented to the marriage and she left for her husband’s village, taking her younger sister for company. The girl had never ground meal since her birth, which in a country where all women grind the meal for the porridge, was a very strange thing. When she arrived at her mother-in-law’s house, her mother-in-law told her to grind meal for food, as she refused to grind any more for her. Mwaliye replied that she did not know how to, but her mother-in-law insisted, so Mwaliye took grain in a basket, a dish and a grinding mortar from her and went to get water. When she came back to the mortar she said, “Alas, to-day I have become a slave!” She then began to grind the meal, and as she stamped it with the long wooden pestle, she sang. This is what she sang: “At home I do nothing but look at the sun, here I am turned into a big flour pestle.” As she sang this, the foot of the mortar sank into the earth. She went on singing and her feet sank into the earth and the dishes sank in as well. Still she wept and went on singing. Then the mortar sank into the earth, and was finally followed by the pestle and the girl.
When her husband came back, his mother was very sad as she did not know what to tell him. A little bird came near the mother’s house and sang a song: “Your Mwaliye has gone very far down under the earth with her basket, and her plates and her mortar and her pestle.” When Mwaliye’s little sister heard that, she ran to the place where Mwaliye had disappeared and started to sing a song: “Open up the hole! Open up the hole! My elder sister! Open up the hole! When she sings thus, she saw the sun! Open up the hole!” When she had sung this, they saw the top of the pestle appearing, so she repeated her song till at last Mwaliye returned with all her things. Then she told her husband how her mother-in-law had made her grind meal and he was very angry.