Abuk was the most beautiful girl in her village. Naturally, every young man wanted to have her as his wife, but Abuk’s proud father was determined she should have only the very best.

"Most of all", he said to her, " I want your husband to be intelligent. That is the most important quality I look for in man who is to marry my daughter."

Abuk knew that her father loved her very much, and would agree to someone who would make her happy. "I shall test everyone who presents himself," he told her. "Only he who is able to do what I ask of him will marry you."

So, when young men came forward to ask for Abuk’s hand, her father would say to them: "If you want to marry Abuk, then bring me a goat that is neither male nor female."

As soon as a young man heard that this was the condition, he knew that Abuk’s father was asking the impossible. So, years went by without any man succeeding in this strange test. It looked as if Abuk would stay unmarried all her life.

Then, one young man fell deeply in love with Abuk and told her that he would like to make her his wife. She, too, saw that here was a man she could make a home with. But Abuk felt sad, for she knew that this man whom she loved would also be unable to pass her father’s test. "Go and ask my father," she told him in a low voice, and the young man was surprised not to see a smile of happiness on her face.

When the young man heard from her father wht the condition was for marrying Abuk, his own face went pale. He went home knowing he would never have her as his wife. His family listened as he told them how Abuk’s father had asked him to bring a goat that was neither male nor female as the price for Abuk’s hand in marriage.

It was his old grandmother who told him not to worry: "Maybe, as you say, he father has set you an impossible task, and I am sure that many young men have wondered how to find such a goat. Go back to her father and tell him you have found a goat of the kind he wants. Tell him that you have it tied up at home, and that it is ready for him to take away with him. But let him know that he must come to take the goat that is neither male nor female at an hour that is neither day nor night."

When, the following morning, the young man told Abuk’s father what his grandmother had said to him, the father smiled and replied: "At last I have found the man I was looking for."

And, so Abuk and the handsome young man were married with a big wedding feast.
 

                                                          ~~The End~~~