Table Mountain

and other

Stories

Christina Viebke-Wallace
 Contents

1 The Cape Peninsula

4 Table Mountain

10 The Dassenberg Mountains

12 The Mischief-maker and the Thorn Tree

17 How Mouse Grew Wings

22 How the Crane got his Crown

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The Cape Peninsula
Long, long ago, when the earth was newly made, two oceans were
flowing towards each other. One ocean was the warm Indian Ocean,
that had wrapped itself around India, and the other was the cold
Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean came from far in the north where
icebergs floated on the water. Both of these oceans met just on the
corner of southern Africa.
“Get out of my way”, whispered the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
“We want to flow along the East Coast.”
“You get out of my way”, splashed the waves of the Indian Ocean.
“We have travelled a long way, and we mean to continue.”
The Atlantic Ocean insisted that he must rule Africa and embrace the
entire coast of this country. The Indian Ocean also wanted to be the
only ocean that flowed along the African coast. They began to argue.
Their argument was quite soft and polite to begin with. Each of them
explained where they had come from, and how naturally they must
continue on their way. But as each of them was blocking the path of
the other, they could not settle the argument in a gentle way.
They began to shout at each other.
“You must move right now, you warm puddle of slop!” roared the
breakers of the Atlantic Ocean.
“Move out of your way? You are joking with me, you bad tempered toe
freezer!” thundered the lively whitecaps of the Indian Ocean.
With each shout the waves were growing taller and mightier.
Then they began to fight with each other.
The Indian Ocean was crashing against the land with such force that
little pieces of soil began to crumble into the water. Slowly but surely
more and more land was washed away, until a huge bay appeared

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where the land had been smooth and straight. We now call this bay
False Bay.
The Atlantic Ocean threw huge fistfuls of sand at the Indian Ocean.
The sand began to cover all of the land close to the edge of the ocean.
Great mounds of sand were piling up. White, soft, ocean sand was
creeping inland and covering the good red earth of Africa. Sand dunes
were growing further and further inland. Even today we see these
mounds of white sand all along the West Coast.
Mother Earth had been watching them all this time. She was thinking
to herself that surely these two oceans could settle their disagreement
without her, but when the shape of Africa began to look quite
different from how she had formed and moulded it, she said:
“Stop”!
Her voice echoed over all of the earth and even into the heavens. A
mighty ridge of rock rose out of the earth. It went far into the water
and separated the Atlantic Ocean from the Indian Ocean. Neither of
them could continue flowing any further, and they had to be content
with their separate sides of Africa. This vast rock, which points like
an admonishing finger into the water, and divides the two oceans, is
now called the Cape Peninsula, or the Cape of Good Hope.

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Table Mountain
In those ancient days when the Father Sky still walked the earth
creating new things as he went along, human beings had not yet been
made. All of the animals were gigantic and could speak. Apart from
the animals only giants lived in Africa.
The giants roamed the land looking for food and for fights. They liked
fighting and destruction best of all. They were so big and clumsy that
trees came crashing to the ground at every step they took. Animals
would flee in all directions when they heard the rumbling of the earth,
warning them of the giant footsteps coming their way. Fear and panic
filled every creature whenever a giant approached. The giants
carelessly squashed animals without even noticing, or hunted them
down with great giant steps to eat them. A giant’s stomach needed
many, many animals to feel full, even though the animals were much
bigger than they are now.
The giants only took from the land. They put nothing back. They did
not sow seeds to grow new plants; they only squashed them with their
clumsy steps, or ripped them out to fight each other, for they even
liked to fight with each other. They did not look after the animals;
they only chased them and ate them, or squashed them. They did not
build shelters for their young; they used caves they could find in cold
bare rocks to sleep in. They did not love and care for the kindly
Mother Earth, they only took from her, and robbed her of her beauty
and her creatures.
With each passing year the race of the giants grew more cruel and
angry. Whenever they saw another giant they turned red in the face
with fury.
“You are on my land,” they would yell, whilst tearing out mighty trees,

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or picking up great boulders of rock to throw them at each other. That
was enough speaking for the giants. Too much talking made them
tired. It was fighting that made them feel good.
Many giants died in these fights, and soon only a small band of giants
was left in Africa.
Father Sky had watched the giants with great sadness. He knew it
was time to create a new race of beings to fill the land. It was time to
create people who would take care of the plants and the animals, who
would build shelters for their young, and who would remember that it
was he who had made the entire world. It was time to create people
who would teach their children to be thankful, loving and kind. But
until the giants had left the land, he could not create these new
people. The giants would squash them, eat them or destroy them, just
as they had done with the plants, the animals, and with each other.
Father Sky did not want to be cruel like the giants. He wanted the
giants to see for themselves that the time had come for them to make
way for a new race. So he spoke to them. He told them of the new
people that would come to this land. He told them how these people
would make the land beautiful once again by planting and sowing, by
caring and growing. He begged the giants to make way for the new
race by letting him take them to dreamland. The giants thought long
and hard, which was not an easy thing for giants. They could see that
the earth did not look as beautiful and wholesome as it used to. They
knew that they had killed most of their own kind and many of the
animals. They understood that their time to leave had come.
The leader of the giants, who was by far the cleverest of them all,
spoke for all of them. He made the longest speech in the history of the
race of giants.

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“We will let you take us away into dream land”, he said,
“If you will treat us as your most treasured guest for only one time, if
we can taste the foods that heaven dwellers eat, and drink the wine
that heaven dwellers drink, then we shall be happier to leave.”
Father Sky was touched by their willingness to make way for the new
race and consented to their request. With one brush of his hand he
wiped off the top of the huge mountain that divided the two oceans,
and made it quite flat on top, like a giant table! The top of the
mountain went crashing into the sea and made a big round island.
We now call this island Robben Island, and the mountain we now call
Table Mountain, because it looks as though it is quite flat on top.
On one side of the table he made twelve seats and on the other side of
the table he made one seat for the leader of the giants, and then he
bid them all sit. Much later the people of Africa saw those twelve
chairs around Table Mountain and thought of another Last Supper
they had heard about. They named these rocks the Twelve Apostles,
in honour of those twelve men who shared a Last Supper with a
gentle young man far, far away in another land.
Great winged creatures were flying towards them through the clouds.
They brought food to the giants that they had never tasted before,

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food and wine that only the heaven dwellers knew how to make. The
giants were giddy with pleasure. They grew soft and pliable, and
gentle and calm. Gradually the smell of the two oceans surrounding
the giant table grew weaker, the smells and tastes of the delicious
food and wine grew fainter. The giants themselves grew fainter, so
faint in fact that it was beginning to be difficult to see them at all.
And then they were gone - gone to dream land, probably.
Around the back of the chair where the leader of the giants had been
sitting, a dark and mischievous spirit was hiding, to spy on the
giants. This spirit was very angry. The giants had always been
creatures to his liking. They had destroyed, hated, maimed, killed,
and been angry and defiant. Suddenly they were sitting as quietly, as
quietly could be, being served heavenly food by heaven dwellers! They
were even willing to leave Africa to make way for a new race, created
by Father Sky. That was not how the mischievous spirit had planned
things. Slowly he crept away to think of a new plan.
The chair behind which the dark spirit had been hiding is a mountain
that we now call Devil’s Peak.

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The Mischief-maker and the Thorn Tree
When Mother Earth had first made the flowers and the animals, she
told them all to close and to sleep at night, so that no harm would
befall them.
Many years had passed since then. A few animals and flowers had not
heeded the advice of Mother Earth, and as nothing bad or untoward
had happened to them, they soon forgot that Mother Earth had ever
even said it. The other animals, flowers and blossoming trees tried to
remind them, but they just laughed and called them scaredy cats.
Now the dark spirit was angry that there were no more evil creatures
left to roam Africa, and he walked around the land at night, looking
for plants that he could make his own. He found some flowers that
had not closed and he spat into them and made them poisonous. Now
when we eat these plants or even touch them they can make us ill, or
even kill us.
The mischief-maker was delighted at his success in fouling up the
creation of Father of All, and he began to whisper to the plants that
had not stayed open to try to persuade them to open after all.
“You should see what I can see, my petal”, he whispered to a daisy
one day.
“What can you see?” asked the daisy.
“I can see heaven dwellers flying around with perfume bottles. It looks
like they want to give you more fragrance.”
“Oh, I can see them myself when I go to sleep, and they already told
me they would save their perfume for less common flowers. Now go
away and let me rest”, said the little daisy.
“Don’t you want to know what I can see?” asked the Mischief Maker.
“The strangest creatures are flying around and want to give you even

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better and even tastier fruit,” he said to the grape vines. Fortunately
they did not listen to him and stayed firmly shut. Only a few plants
listened to him, and allowed their curiosity to get the better of them.
They opened themselves, only to be spat into by the malicious
mischief-maker. These plants were not so very poisonous, for they
had listened to Father of All’s command in the beginning, and had
only been persuaded by the mischief-maker’s tempting lies. Potatoes
were amongst these plants. Their fruit and blossoms did not get
tastier as the mischief-maker had promised, but became poisonous to
human beings. We still eat the roots, though they also have a little of
the poison in them, but if we eat too many of them we become slow-
witted like the giants, the creatures that the mischief-maker loved so
much. Even the tomatoes, the green and red peppers, and the
aubergines or brinjal have a little of the mischief-maker's poison in
them. We call all of these plants nightshades because they do not
close their blossoms after the sun has set.
Now the mischief-maker turned his attention to the trees. The pear
and apple trees were utterly devoted to the sun, and the mischief-
maker did not even manage to get them to listen to his tempting
whispers. The cherry tree, though she loved Lady Moon, also would
not listen to him. So the mischief-maker approached the nut trees.
They were so strong and vehement in their determination to keep
their blossoms closed that the mischief-maker punished them with
hard shells, thinking that now humans could no longer eat of their
delicious fruit.
The last tree that the mischief-maker approached was a very plain
tree that bore no strongly smelling blooms, and gave no fruit or nuts
to human beings and animals. “Surely, this one will open for me, if I

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promise him to be more remarkable”, thought the mischief-maker.
But no matter how many promises he made and how many lies he
told, the faithful tree would not open up, “Mother Earth will reward
me in some way for my strength”, thought the little tree.
The mischief-maker finally grew impatient with the plain little tree
and scratched its bark with his cruel, sharp fingernails. The poor tree
gasped in pain, as its skin was ripped away from its trunk in long
shreds. It only just managed to control its anguish. The mischief-
maker stomped away and left the tree alone to its pain.
Hardly able to sleep at all that night from fear and discomfort, the
tree awoke the next morning to find all of the bits of bark that the
mischief-maker had scratched open had turned into extremely sharp,
and long spikes. All of its branches were now covered in many sharp
looking barbs.
A little while later people came walking by and exclaimed in
excitement when they saw the little tree covered in long, malicious
looking thorns. “Please may we have some of your branches to build
pens for our cattle and our goats?” they asked. “It would protect our
animals from dangerous wild cats and from thieves”, they explained.
The tree consented and glowed with pride at the thought that its
branches would be used to help human beings and their animals. We
now call this tree a thorn tree, and it is still used to build Kraals for
goats, sheep, and cows.

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How Mouse Grew Wings
Now it was the turn of the animals to fear nightfall, for the mischief-
maker did everything he could to get them to wake up at night. A
young mouse listened to the other animals talk about the mischief-
makers nightly prowls, his sweet promises, and his cruel deeds, but
young mouse paid little attention.
One evening, after mother mouse had tucked him into bed, young
mouse’s stomach started growling, quite gently at first, but ever
louder and louder. The young mouse knew that mother would not
want him to get out of bed at night, so he waited for her to go to sleep.
When he heard the covers being pulled up over mother mouse’s ears,
and soon afterwards, heard mother mouse’s little snorings and
snufflings, he tiptoed out of the hole.
Somewhere on the other side of the tree there was a little entrance to
the storeroom where mother mouse kept their supplies of acorns,
nuts, and dried berries. Young mouse had just spotted the entrance
and was about to run to it, when a rough hand picked him up from
behind.
“What are you doing out so late?” snarled the mischief-maker.
Young mouse knew it was him, because of his wicked smile, his
horns, and the long spindly tail behind him.
“No matter why you are here”, the mischief-maker continued,” I will
make myself a new animal”. He squeezed the mouse so hard that it
nearly jumped out of its skin in fright. Then the dark spirit tore pieces
of the young mouse’s skin from each of its tender sides, spat on the
ends and stuck them on its back. Now mischief-maker admired his
own handiwork and giggled to himself. He threw the young mouse
into the dark night sky.

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The young mouse was hurting very much where his skin had been
torn off, and was relieved to have a chance to get away from the evil
one. It wiggled its back and hoped to land somewhere far away when,
to his amazement, he found that the pieces of skin on his back where
flapping about like birds wings and were keeping him up in the air.
Young mouse kept wriggling his back and those pieces of skin kept
flapping and making him fly.
Far below him he heard the mischief-maker laughing and calling after
him, “you are called bat, little one, and I don’t think you should go
back home, looking the way you do. You are my creature now.”
Little bat saw that this was true. He could not return to his mother
the way he looked now. She would scold him, and then she would cry
until all the neighbours knew how naughty he had been too. Bat kept
flying. He kept flying all night long. When the first light of dawn
coloured the sky a soft peachy rose, he grew tired, and his eyes began
to hurt. Quickly he found a dark nook in a cave, where the sunlight
could not hurt his eyes and feeling very ashamed, he fell into an
unhappy sleep.
That day the young bat, as he was now called, dreamed in his sleep.
He dreamed that he was in the house of Father Sky. Father Sky
looked at him sternly but with kindness, and said,
”Dear little bat, no creature ever truly belongs to the mischief-maker.
Though you are doomed to be awake only during the night, you can
still do the work of Father Sky’s creatures. When you fly about at
night to catch moths and flies, you will also suck out of the air all the
impure words and thoughts that have come into the night sky from
the prowling of the mischief-maker. As a way of thanking you, I will
make your voice resound so high that the mischief-maker will not be

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able to hear you. You will be able to sing praises, and to speak kindly
to the trees as you fly by, without the mischief-maker ever noticing.”
When bat awoke the next night he knew his dream had been a true
dream, for his voice was so high and pure that he could feel it rise
straight to heaven, and the mischief-maker never even heard a
whisper of what young bat was singing. Though little bat’s back still
ached, though he missed his old life and his mother, he felt glad that
Father Sky still loved him, and that he could still do something good
for the creatures of the earth.

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How the Crane got his Crown
Mother mouse looked for her son everywhere. For days she ran from
tree to tree, asking the birds and the bees, the squirrels and the other
mice, “Have you seen my little son? He has been gone for three days.”
“No”, twittered the birds.
“No”, buzzed the bees.
“No”, scolded the squirrels.
“No”, squeaked the mice.
Then she went to the pond.
“Have you seen my son?” she asked the frogs and the fishes.
“No”, croaked the frogs.
“No”, mouthed the fishes.
Mother mouse gathered all her courage and she went to ask the
elephant and the lion.
“Have you seen my son?” she asked them.
“No”, trumpeted the elephant.
“No”, roared the lion.
Now mother mouse had nobody left to ask. She went back to her
home and wept. She wept for so long and so loudly, that all the other
creatures felt sad listening to her weeping. The birds stopped
twittering, the bees stopped buzzing, the squirrels stopped scolding,
and the other mice stopped squeaking.
In the pond the frogs stopped croaking, and the fish kept their
mouths quite closed.
Even the bigger animals heard mother mouse and felt sad with her.
The elephant stopped trumpeting and the lion stopped roaring.
It was very, very quiet.
The sun noticed that everyone was sad, and she said, “I will set right

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away and I will not rise in the morning, to show that I am sad too.”
‘Then I will stop blowing”, said the wind.
When the moon heard the sun and the wind she said," I will not rise
tonight."
The stars piped up, “And we will not twinkle and shine.”
Now it was truly dark on earth. Everyone was afraid. The animals
huddled together as close as they could. Little mother mouse was too
afraid of the dark to weep.
The cranes were afraid of the dark too, but they knew that all
creatures would die if the sun did not rise again. They gathered
themselves into a large circle. Big and round like the sun, and then
they began their ‘welcoming back the sun’ dance. The cranes lifted up
their long, long legs, and took eight steps into the circle. Then they
lifted up their long, long legs again, and took eight steps out. Now
they faced their partners, and lifted up their long, long legs again to
circle around their partners. And then they faced their big, round
circle one more time. It was a beautiful dance. So beautiful that the
sun peaked out from her hiding place in the ocean and slowly began
to rise again. Sun was so pleased with the cranes that he gave each of
them a beautiful crown. The crowns were made of rows of brightly
coloured spikes that looked like the rays of the rising sun. The
crowned cranes lifted up their long, long legs and strutted away with
great pride.
That night, the moon appeared in the sky, with all the stars twinkling
and shinning around her. She saw what had happened to the young
mouse.
“Ah”, said the moon. “Do not be sad mother mouse. Your son has
learned to fly in the dark night sky. He is feeling a little ashamed, but

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he is quite fine I think.”
Mother mouse was no longer sad when she heard what moon had
said. All the creatures cheered up again and began to twitter, to buzz,
to scold, and to squeak. In the pond there was a swishing and a
croaking, and far in the distance could be heard trumpeting and
roaring.

The cranes were allowed to keep their beautiful crowns and still do
their welcome back sun dance every spring..

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