The Bird and His Wife

There was a bird, and he had a wife; her name was Em-Kaleb. 

The bird's wife became sick, and her husband knew she was going to die, so he asked her, "After you are dead, should I kill a funeral cow for you? Or should I hold up your name, saying all the time: My wife! Em-Kaleb!" 

She told her husband, "After I am dead, hold up my name."

Then she died.

Ever since, the bird keeps calling, "My wife! Em-Kaleb!"

This bird's call is also a proverb: "my-wife-em-kaleb" means a person who repeats the same thing over and over.

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Inspired by: "Of a Certain Bird and his Wife" in Tales, Customs, Names, and Dirges of the Tigre Tribes by Enno Littmann, 1915.
Notes: You can read the original story online. The author did not give the species of the bird, so I chose this lovebird which is found in Ethiopia. The text says "funeral victim," but I found the translation "funeral cow" here: A Descriptive Study of Tigree Grammar.

lovebird