O007  Rona and the Moon

There was a woman called Rona who had two children. One night, she woke up in the middle of the night. She was feeling thirsty, so she left her two children and walked down towards the spring to get some water. And she carried with her calabash to bring the water back. It was a moonlit night, so she had no trouble following the path to the spring. However, on the way, a cloud covered the moon. And it suddenly became dark.  in the darkness, she stubbed her foot against a tree root and hurt herself. she was so annoyed that the moon had failed to provide her with light, that she shouted out at the moon, �gPokokohua�h in Mari, which means �gyou cooted moon�h And this is one of the worst insults you can say ever to anyone in the Mari language. And suddenly, Rona felt herself being grabbed and she realized that the moon had come down from the sky had taken hold of her, and was pulling her up towards the sky. To try and stop this happening she reached out and grabbed at the nearest tree and it was a Nile tree, one of the New Zealand trees. But she couldn�ft resist the strength of the moon. And she was pulled right up into the sky. In the morning when her children woke up, her mother was not there. They looked everywhere for her but couldn�ft find her. They cried and cried but still couldn�ft find their mother. And then, suddenly, they heard a voice from the sky shouting down at them, and they recognized it was their mother�fs voice. And the voice said, �gChildren, children, I�fm up here. Up here among the moon and stars.�h And then looked up and they could see their mother on the moon. And on one side of the mother they could see the calabash that she was holding, and on the other side, they could see the Nile tree. And ever since then, if you look at the moon, if you look at the full moon on a moonlit night, you�fll be able to see Rona in the moon with the calabash and, the Nile tree beside her.