The Spider was very angry, and repented having been so stupid as to refuse all the nice young men of her own town to be deceived by this snake from a distance. The poor Spider became very thin and would have died, only someone helped her back to her father.
The custom of making blood-brotherhood was very common on the Upper Congo. The ceremony has already been described in a previous chapter, and therefore it is not necessary to go again into detail. During the performance of the rite the contracting parties who exhibited any doubt of each other’s faithfulness in properly observing the bond would put one another under a prohibition or taboo, and so long as they carefully obeyed the prohibition the blood bond remained in force.
In the following story the birds enter into this blood bond, and the peculiarities of each are regarded as prohibitions placed on them during the ceremony. There are many such stories accounting for the physical idiosyncrasies of various birds and animals.
Story XV
The Heron and the Parrot are unbelieving
When the Heron and the Parrot entered into the bonds of blood-brotherhood the Heron put the Parrot under a ban, saying: “Friend Parrot, you must always remain in the tree-tops, and never alight on the ground. If you do so you will not be able to fly again, for you will be caught, killed, and eaten; and even if you are not killed the folk who catch you will tame you, and you will lose your power to fly again in the air.”
The Parrot said: “Friend Heron, you must never build a house to sleep in it; if you do you will die.”
After some time the Heron began to doubt the words of the Parrot, and he said to himself: “Perhaps my friend told me a lie about sleeping in a house. I will test his words, and if I die my family will know that the words of the Parrot are true, and they will never sleep in a house.”
That evening the Heron entered a house (nest), and next morning his family found him lying dead. Ever since that time the Herons have always slept on the branches of the trees.