In the olden days, the Hare and the Spider were good friends. The spider was courting a beautiful girl. He longed to marry her. She loved him, and although she had never said it, she desired to marry him too. One day the Spider said to the Hare: “Come my friend. I’d like to show you my bride to be”.

They went for the visit. And when the Spider was out of earshot, the Hare spoke to the girl saying: “Have you agreed to marry Mr. Spider? How can you marry a person with eight legs? You will be getting too tired because you have to fetch a lot of water from the river. Each day you have to fetch eight gourds of water, for Mr. Spider uses a gourd of water on each of his legs.” Now upon hearing this, the girl decided she would not marry the Spider- she could not spend the rest of her life fetching water to wash the Spider’s legs.

Now the Spider returned, and he found that the girl would not marry him. He went home feeling very disappointed and suspected his friend, the Hare, of having talked to the girl. The Spider did not give up, he went out again from his home and looked for a new girl. ‘This one is better than the other one’, he thought. Again the Spider took his friend, the Hare, to see his new friend.

Again, the Hare played the same trick on his friend. This happened many times. Eventually Mr. Spider said to himself: “Now that I am unable to find a girl to marry here on earth, I shall go to the skies to look for a wife there”. So Mr. Spider climbed up into the skies, and right there, near the entrance, saw a very beautiful girl. He spoke to her and she agreed to be his wife.

Now the Hare did not like that girls always agreed to marry Mr. Spider. So the next day, as Mr Spider carried him up into the skies to meet her, he thought about how he would get to this girl too. The Hare whispered to the girl about Mr. Spider’s legs, and watched as she too refused to marry the Spider. But this time, Mr. Spider put two and two together. He became very angry. Mr. Spider took his web and came straight down. He married another girl. Mr. Spider then quickly folded his web, leaving the Hare stranded in the skies.

The people of the sky took pity on the Hare. Their chief spoke to him saying: “We will tie two strong ropes around your ears and use them to lower you down to your people. When you reach home, shake the ropes vigorously so we will know you have arrived.” So they began taking him down, faster and faster. His ears stretched and he felt great pain. When halfway down to earth the Hare shook the ropes by mistake, and thinking he had arrived, the sky people let the ropes go. The Hare fell down with a big thud. He broke his back which was healed after two moons but from that time his ears have remained very long.