Jack and the Beanstalk
Libanza and his sister, Nsongo, started on their travels in the long ago, and as they journeyed Libanza changed himself into a boy covered with yaws. A man out hunting turned aside from his party of hunters, and meeting Libanza and his sister, he exclaimed: “I have found some slaves!” He thereupon took possession of them and led them to the hunting camp.
Their new master and the other hunters were there for the purpose of snaring monkeys, and although their master caught some, yet he was not very successful. So one day Libanza said to him: “Give me the snares, and let me try to catch some monkeys.”
But as he appeared to be such a poor, weak boy covered with yaws, the master laughed at him, and twitted him with his smallness. However, on being repeatedly asked, the master gave the boy the snares, and he caught thirty monkeys in a very little time, and brought them back to the camp to be divided among the hunters.
While the hunters were busy dividing the monkeys, Libanza and his sister took some meat and ran away. After journeying for a long distance they came near to a large town, and again Libanza turned himself into a boy covered with yaws.
The people of the town were pounding sugar-canes for making sugar-cane wine; but a man seeing them claimed them as his slaves, and brought them and sat them on the end of the large wooden mortar in which the other men were pounding up the canes.
After a time Libanza said: “Give me a pestle,[[24]] so that I may crush the canes.” But the people laughed that so small a lad should make such a request.
[24]. The pestles for crushing sugar-canes are like heavy clubs, made of hard wood, and weigh from 20 lbs. to 30 lbs. each.
However, after he had repeatedly asked, they gave him a pestle, and Libanza used it with such vigour that it snapped in two. They brought him two others, and taking one in each hand he pounded so strongly that they also broke; and thus he broke all they had in the town except the last one, and with that he ran away, and the people feared to follow him.
As they travelled, Nsongo caught sight of a person in the distance and wanted to marry him; but on being called the person would not come to her. So Libanza changed himself, first into a shell and then into a saucepan, and followed the man; but in these disguises Libanza was not able to catch the man for his sister because he ran away filled with fear.