were pounding a mash with pestles in a mortar, while God stood by
looking on. For some reason they were annoyed by the presence of the
deity and told him to be off; and as he did not take himself off fast
enough to please them, they beat him with their pestles. In a great huff
God retired altogether from the world and left it to the direction of
the fetishes; and still to this day people say, "Ah, if it had not been
for that old woman, how happy we should be!" However, after he had
withdrawn to heaven, the long-suffering deity sent a kind message by a
goat to men upon earth to say, "There is something which they call
Death. He will kill some of you. But even if you die, you will not
perish completely. You will come to me in heaven." So off the goat set
with this cheering intelligence. But before he came to the town he saw a
tempting bush by the wayside and stopped to browse on it. When God in
heaven saw the goat thus loitering by the way, he sent off a sheep with
the same message to carry the glad tidings to men without delay. But the
sheep did not give the message aright. Far from it: he said, "God sends
you word that you will die and that will be an end of you." Afterwards
the goat arrived on the scene and said, "God sends you word that you
will die, certainly, but that will not be the end of you, for you will
go to him." But men said to the goat, "No, goat, that is not what God
said. We believe that the message which the sheep brought us is the one
which God sent to us." That was the beginning of death among men.[65]
However, in another Ashantee version of the tale the parts played by the
sheep and the goat are reversed. It is the sheep who brings the tidings
of immortality from God to men, but the goat overruns him and offers
them death instead. Not knowing what death was, men accepted the seeming
boon with enthusiasm and have died ever since.[66]

[Sidenote: II. The story of the Waxing and Waning Moon. Hottentot story
of the Moon, the hare, and death.]

So much for the tale of the Two Messengers. In the last versions of it
which I have quoted, a feature to be noticed is the perversion of the
message by one of the messengers, who brings tidings of death instead of
life eternal to men. The same perversion of the message reappears in
some examples of the next type of story which I shall illustrate, namely
the type of the Waxing and Waning Moon. Thus the Namaquas or Hottentots
say that once the Moon charged the hare to