Folklore of the Santal Parganas, Cecil Henry Bompas [sad books to read .TXT] 📗

_pagri_. And they said "It is no good

quarrelling; let us put our power to the test and see who can deprive

this man of the shawl he has wrapped round him." Then the Wind asked

to be allowed to try first and said "You will see that I will blow

away the blanket in no time," and the Sun said, "All right, you go

first." So the Wind began to blow hard; but the man only wrapped

his shawl more tightly round him to prevent its being blown away and

fastened it round himself with his _pagri_; and though the Wind blew

fit to blow the man away, it could not snatch the shawl from him;

so it gave up and the Sun had a try; he rose in the sky and blazed

with full force and soon the man began to drip with sweat; and he took

off his shawl and hung it on the stick he carried over his shoulder

and the Wind had to admit defeat.

CIX. (The Coldest Season.)

 

One winter day a bear and a tiger began to dispute as to which is

the coldest season of the year; the bear said July and August, which

is the rainy season, and the tiger said December and January, which

is the winter season. They argued and argued but could not convince

each other; for the bear with his long coat did not feel the cold of

winter but when he got soaked through in the rain he felt chilly.

 

At last they saw a man coming that way and called on him to

decide--"but have a care"--said the tiger--"if you give an opinion

favourable to the bear, I will eat you;" and the bear said "If you

side with the tiger, _I_ will eat you." At this the man was terror

stricken but an idea struck him and he made the tiger and the bear

promise not to eat him if he gave a fair decision and then he said

"It is not the winter which is the coldest, nor the rainy season which

is the coldest, but windy weather; if there is no wind no one feels

the cold much either in the winter or in the rainy season." And the

tiger and the bear said "You are right, we never thought of that"

and they let him go.

CHAPTER II Part II.

 

To a people living in the jungles the wild animals are much more than

animals are to us. To the man who makes a clearing in the forest,

life is largely a struggle against the beasts of prey and the animals

who graze down the crops. It is but natural that he should credit

them with feelings and intelligence similar to those of human beings,

and that they should seem to him suitable characters around which to

weave stories.

 

These stories are likely to be particularly current among a people

occupying a forest country, and for this reason are less likely to

appear in collections made among the inhabitants of towns. It is a

strange coincidence and presumably only a coincidence that Story 118,

'The Hyena outwitted' is known in a precisely similar form among the

Kaffirs of South Africa.

 

CX. (The Jackal and the Crow.)

 

Once upon a time a crow and a jackal became bosom friends and they

agreed that the crow should support the jackal in the hot weather

and the jackal support the crow in the rainy season. By-and-bye the

jackal got discontented with the arrangement, and vowed that it would

not go on supporting an animal of another species, but would take

some opportunity of eating it up. But he did not let this appear,

and one day he invited the crow to a feast and gave him as many frogs

and grasshoppers as he could eat and treated him well and they parted

very affectionately.

 

Then a few days later the crow invited the jackal to dinner in

return; and when the jackal arrived the crow led him to an ant-hill

and showed him a hollow gourd which he had filled with live mice and

said "Here is your dinner." The jackal could not get his nose into

the hole of the gourd so, to get at the mice, he had to break it. And

the mice ran all over the place and the jackal jumped about here and

there trying to catch them. At this sight the crow stood and laughed;

and the jackal said to himself "Very well, my friend, you invited me

here to have a laugh at me; wait till I have finished with the mice;

then it will be your turn."

 

So when he had caught all the mice he could, he declared that he

had had as much as he could eat and would like to go and sleep off

his meal. As they said farewell and were salaaming to each other,

the jackal pounced on the crow and ate him up; not a bone or a claw

was left. Then the jackal began to skip with joy and sang:--

 

 

    "I ate a gourdful of mice

    And by the side of the ant-hill

    I ate the crow: Hurrah!"

 

 

And singing thus he went skipping homewards; and on the way he

met a fowl and called to it to get out of the way or he would eat

it,--singing:--

 

 

    "I ate a gourdful of mice

    And by the side of the ant-hill

    I ate the crow:--Hurrah!"

 

 

And as the fowl did not move he ate it up; then he skipped on and

came to a goat and he sang his verse and told it to get out of the

way and as it did not, he ate it; and in the same way he met and

killed a sheep and a cow and he ate the liver and lungs of the cow;

and then he killed a buffalo and ate its liver and lungs; and by this

time he was as full as he could hold. Then he came to a pool of water

and he called to it to get out of the way or he would drink it up and

as it did not move, he drank it dry. Then he came to a post and said

"Get out of my way or I will jump over you"--

 

 

    "I ate a gourdful of mice

    And by the side of the ant-hill

    I ate the crow--Hurrah!"

 

 

And so saying he tried to jump over it; but he was so full of what

he had eaten and drunk that he leaped short and fell on the point of

the stake and was transfixed, so that he died.

CXI. (The Tiger Cub and the Calf.)

 

A Tigress and a Cow used to graze in a dense jungle, and they were

both with young. They became great friends and agreed that they

would marry their children to each other. In the course of time the

tigress gave birth to a she-cub and the cow to a bull-calf. They kept

the young ones in the same place and used to go and graze together,

and then return at the same time to suckle their young. On their way

back they used to drink at a certain river, the tigress up the stream

and the cow lower down. One day it happened that the cow got first

to the river and drank at the upper drinking place, and the tigress

drank lower down. And the froth from the cow's mouth floated down the

stream and the tigress tasted it and found it nice, and this made her

think that the flesh of the cow must also be good; so she resolved to

eat the cow one day. The cow saw what was in the mind of the tigress

and she left some of her milk in a bowl, and said to her calf:

"The tigress has resolved to eat me; watch this milk and when you

see it turn red like blood, you will know that I have been killed;"

then she went off to graze with the tigress.

 

The two youngsters always used to play together very happily but

that day the calf would not play but kept going to look at the bowl

of milk; and the tigress cub asked the reason. The calf told her

what his mother had said; then the tigress cub said that if this

happened she would never suck from her mother again and it would

be better for them both to run away. So the two kept going to look

at the bowl of milk, and about midday they saw that it had changed

to blood and they both began to weep. Shortly after, the tigress

came back, and flies were clustered round her mouth because of the

blood on it. The tigress told her daughter to come and suck, but she

said that she would wait till the cow came and then she and the calf

could have their meal together as usual; at this the tigress frowned

terribly and the cub was frightened, so she said, "Very well, mother,

I will suck, but first go and wash your mouth; why are the flies

clustered round it?" So the tigress went off but she did not wash,

she only ate some more of the cow. While she was away, the calf and

the cub ran off to another jungle, and when the tigress came back,

she searched for them with horrid roarings and could not find them,

and if she had found them she would have killed them.