A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

Overview

A hawk carrying human flesh accidentally drops it into a king's cooking soup. The king eats the piece without recognizing it and demands the same flavor again. Meat from goats, cattle and forest animals cannot satisfy the request. When he eventually kills and eats a member of his household, he recognizes the taste and continues killing until that household is gone. The remaining town inhabitants flee, leaving him alone with the craving.

With no other food of that kind available, he pulls pieces from his own body and eats them until only bones remain. The tale continues to describe him running, his skeleton making a repeated rattling sound. A passing man offers a final object for pursuit: the king kills him but is too weak to carry the body back. He falls and dies. The extraordinary moving-bone condition is thus the endpoint of the ruler's destructive appetite, not an initial species or a ghost returning from burial. Comparative notes give a different visiting-daughter escape but do not replace this selected ending.

Accidental taste discoverySelf-consumptionMoving skeletonAudible bone rattleFinal weakness and death
01

Origins & earliest records

Tale 97 is credited Sar(r)ikin Samari in Tremearne's narrator key. Selected witness: second edition 1913; exact narration date unspecified.

02

Records & interpretation

Complete main tale 97, printed pp. 447-449, directly read; comparative versions distinguished from main action.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

  1. 01

    Hausa Superstitions and Customs

    Sar(r)ikin Samari, storyteller; A. J. N. Tremearne, collector and translator · 1913

    Second edition; tale 97, pp. 447-449.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

  1. Collected primary narrativeHausa Superstitions and Customs - tale 97Research access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

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