“My daughter, you rubbed your hair with oil from a pot:
My daughter, you combed your hair with a comb with one row of teeth;
Come hither to me, my daughter.”
And the girl sang from within the cave:
“Mother, he has shut me in with a stone
With a stone door he has shut me in, mother
Mother, you must go back home.”
Then her father sang the same song and got the same answer; so they all went home. Then the girl’s father’s younger brother and his wife came and sang the song and received the same answer and then her mother’s brother and father’s sister came and then all her relations, but all in vain. Last of all came her brother riding on a horse and when he heard his sister’s answer he turned his horse round and made it prance and kick until it kicked open the stone door of the cave; but this was of no avail for inside were inner doors which he could not open; so he also had to go home and leave his sister with the bonga.
The girl was not unhappy as the wife of the bonga and after a time she proposed to him they should go and pay a visit to her parents. So the next day they took some cakes and dried rice and set off; they were welcomed right warmly and pressed to stay the night. In the course of the afternoon the girl’s mother chanced to look at the provisions which they had brought with them; and was surprised to see that in place of cakes was dried cowdung and instead of rice, leaves of the meral tree. The mother called her daughter in to look but the girl could give no explanation; all she knew was that she had put up cakes and dried rice at starting. Her father told them all to keep quiet about the matter lest there should be any unpleasantness and the bonga decline to come and visit them again.