Mariam
retells one of the stories that she has heard.
Like all Burkinabč stories, this story has a
moral – that the old are wise and the young
are often weak.
Once there was a young woman and her husband.
The woman became pregnant. One day she went
to the river to collect water. She gave birth
to her child but decided to abandon it, leaving
it in the sand. But an old lady also arrived
to collect water, and found the baby and took
it home.
When the young woman went home, her husband
realised that she must have given birth and
left the baby somewhere. He looked for it,
and asked all the children in the village
to sing their songs to him, but the songs
told him nothing.
The old lady looked after the baby, and he
grew to become a young boy. One day the old
lady gave the boy a bag in which to carry
his lunch, and a whistle. She asked him to
go to look after her sheep and told him that
he should sing:
‘My mother buried me in the sand,
An old lady called Bankadu,
Bankadu took me out of the sand,
And made me a whistle to sing
Who doesn’t know his own?
Siyolo (the sound of the whistle)’
The boy went far with the grazing sheep,
whistling and singing the song. When his father
heard the song he recognised that the boy
must be his son, and they were reunited.
