MARGI TALES OR MYTHS

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Version I (From M. Bitrus Kajil)

Once the sky, where our vision ends, was not as far away as it is  now. The sky was so close to the ground that when someone ascended  a very high mountain he could even touch it with a very long guinea corn stalk. When people prayed to iju he sent his only daughter, Awa, with  whatever the person prayed for. When poor people prayed to iju for  food, for example, they were given the food. There was, among the  people who were given food by iju, a very careless woman who was  too lazy to wash the container in which the food was given. So when  the daughter of iju was washing the container a splinter got under her  fingernail and she died.  See that the daughter of iju was killed because of the carelessness  of mankind, iju took the sky very far away from man so that there  should be no communion between him and man.

Version II (M. Margima Gadzama)

Long ago iju was close to the people of the world. At that time people did not do work for their food. Whenever they wanted to get something to eat, they just told iju what kind of food they wanted. This request would be made in the evening and before the next day the food  would be there. Also before the request they had to decide the type or  kind of food they wanted. They lived this way for many years, but one day a careless woman left the calabash, in which the food came, dirty. When iju came to take it, he saw that it was dirty and gave it to his daughter to wash. When then became angry and went up into the sky. When they begged him to  come down he refused, and they had to work for what they wanted to  eat. Today you see many people of the world working for their food. This tale, while acknowledging the supremacy of iju, nonetheless validates the remoteness of iju.

Thus despite the supremacy of the power of iju, it is a generalized power, only  implicitly concerned with daily routines and the problems of men. Iju is the raison d'être of all,  but this fact--and it is a fact to Margi--exists as an unspecified axiom of which all other concepts  are but coronaries

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