A certain hunter set his trap, but he was a little too lazy to go and check it. So he sent his daughter saying,“Go and look at my trap, I have to finish this beer.” And he sat under a tree in his homestead while his daughter went to see the trap. She found a guinea-fowl caught in it, and it looked big and juicy.

But just as she reached out to grab the guinea-fowl, the bird let out a loud cry in the manner of their kind, making a sound that, to the girl, seemed to be ‘kirijakija.’ Then, it broke out into a song in a human voice, and she was a taken aback. She stepped away from the bird.

“Little girl, little girl,” the guinea-fowl sung, “kirijakija, what have you come to do?”

It’s voice was sweet, and captivating, reminding her of the musicians in the moonlit dances. It soothed the girl, and so she quickly recovered from her fright, and from the shock of hearing a bird speak like a human.

“I came to look at the trap,” the girl said.

And the guinea-fowl, still in a sing-song, asked her, “Whose trap is it?”

And the girl replied, “It is my father’s trap. He set it.”

Then the guinea-fowl broke into a mournful song, pleading with the little girl, it’s voice full of tears. “Go and tell your father to let me go,” it sang. “I’ll give him a white bead and a white sheep, if he lets me go.”

So the girl hurried back home and found her father a little tipsy from the malwa, and she told him what the guinea-fowl had offered.

“You are a bad child!” the father said, and he abused his daughter. “You are good for nothing. You can’t even do a little task I ask you to do.”

So the man sent his son, who was a little older than the girl, and the son went to trap and he found the guinea-fowl. His sister had told him all about it, and so when the bird spoke, he did not grow frightened.

“Little boy, little boy, kirijakija,” the guinea-fowl sung to him. “What have you come to do?”

And the boy replied, “My father sent me to check the trap.”

So the guinea-fowl made another offer, “Go tell your father that I will give him a white chicken, and a white sheep, and a white bead, if he lets me go.”

The offer seemed reasonable and the boy returned home and told his father, but the man was very angry when he heard that and abused his son just as he had abused his daughter. Then he sent his wife, and the guinea-fowl made her the same offer it had made to the children, adding to it a white piece of bark cloth, which the wife thought was very generous since white bark cloth was very hard to come by. When the man heard this, however, he was now a little tipsy and so he became even angrier, and he went to the trap himself.