Part 5 (1/2)

”If our lord watches right here,” said the cunning hare, ”his slave will go to the lord of the flute and ask permission,” and the tiger, well content, sat down to wait.

Again the cunning hare deceived the tiger by pretending to ask permission, and when a long distance off he called as before: ”Our lord has permission to play the flute. Let him put it in his mouth and blow with all his might. This is the custom of the lord of the flute.”

The foolish tiger immediately took the snake's head into his mouth, but the sound that followed came from the tiger, not from the flute, and a terrible yell he gave as the snake bit his mouth! But the hare was far away and would soon have been safe but for an unlooked for accident that nearly ended her life.

The people who lived in that part of the hill and water country were at war with the State that joined them on the north, and thinking that the soldiers of the enemy would soon invade their country they had made a trap in the middle of the path over which the hare was running. First they dug a hole so deep that should anybody fall in, it would be impossible to climb out again. The sides of the pit were dug on the slant so that the opening was smaller than the bottom. Over the top they had placed thin strips of bamboo that would break if any extra weight came upon them and they had covered the whole with gra.s.s and leaves so that no traveler would know that a trap was there. Into this hole fell the poor little hare.

Presently the tiger came up to see where the hare had gone, and when he saw the hole in the middle of the path, he called out, ”Where are you, friend hare?” and the hare from the bottom of the trap called out, ”I have fallen into a trap.”

Then the tiger sat on the ground and just bent double with laughter to think that at last he had the hare in his power, but the little animal down in the hole although she did not say anything, thought harder in a few minutes than the tiger had in all his life. By and by as she looked up through the hole she had made in the roof, she saw that the sky overhead was getting darker and darker as a storm was coming on, so in great glee, although she pretended to be very much frightened, she called out as loudly as ever she could:

”Our lord tiger! our lord tiger!”

At first the tiger did not answer, so the hare then called, ”Does not our lord see the great danger approaching? Let our lord look at the sky.”

The tiger looked up and saw the dark clouds coming slowly, slowly on, covering the whole sky; his laughter stopped and he soon began to get very frightened.

After a while, when it had become still darker, he called to the hare: ”O friend, what is the matter with the sky? What is going to happen?”

Then the hare replied: ”Our lord, the sky has fallen where you see it is dark; that is far away, but in a few minutes it will fall here and everybody will be crushed to death.”

The foolish tiger was now frightened half to death and called to the hare: ”O friend, I have treated you badly in trying to kill you. Do not be angry and take revenge on me, but take compa.s.sion on my terrible condition, and graciously tell me how to escape this danger, and I swear that I will never try to harm you more.”

It was the hare's turn to laugh now, but she only laughed quietly to herself, for she was afraid the tiger would hear her, then she said, ”Down here our lord's slave is quite safe. If our lord descends, he too will be safe,” and before the hare had hardly finished, the cowardly tiger made a jump for the hole the hare had made and joined her at the bottom of the trap.

But the hare was not out yet and she began to plan how she could get out herself and yet keep the tiger in. At last a happy thought struck her.

She sidled up to the tiger and began to tickle him in the ribs. The tiger squirmed and twisted first one way and then the other, first to one side and then to the other; at last he could stand it no longer and catching the hare he threw her out of the trap and she landed on solid ground.

As soon as the hare found she was safe, she began to call at the top of her voice: ”O men, come! come! I, the hare have deceived the tiger and he is at the bottom of the trap. O men, come! I, the hare call you.

Bring your spears and guns; bring your swords, and kill the tiger that I have tricked into entering the trap.”

At first the men did not believe the hare, for they did not think that an animal so small as the hare could deceive the tiger, but then they also knew that the hare was very clever and had much wisdom, so they brought their spears and their guns, their swords and their sticks, and killed the tiger in the trap.

Thus did the hare prove that though small she was full of wisdom, and although the tiger was bigger, stronger, and fiercer than she, yet she, through her wisdom, was able to kill him.

THE STORY OF THE TORTOISE.

There was once a man who had two wives. Now as everybody knows it is always the chief wife that the husband loves best, while the other instead of being _Mae Long_, is only _Mae Noi_, and this often causes jealousy and trouble in the family. It was so in this case, especially as the chief wife did not have a son to add to her dignity. They each had a daughter, the name of the chief wife's child was Nang Hsen Gaw, and that of the other Nang E.

One day the husband of these women went to the lake to fish. He caught a large number of sh.e.l.l fish and put them on the sh.o.r.e for his wives to bring home. The younger took her share of the load, but, being very hungry, she ate them all. The mother of Nang Hsen Gaw, however, was not greedy like the other woman, and so she put all the fish that were left into her bag and began to trudge slowly toward the house.

Now, the mother of Nang E was a witch, although no one, of course, knew it. Being wicked enough to be a witch, she did not hesitate at committing any other crime, even the most dreadful, and she therefore made up her mind that she would kill the mother of Nang Hsen Gaw so that she could be the chief wife. She got home much sooner than the other woman, as she had no load to carry, and when she saw her husband he naturally asked her where the fish were. ”Now,” she thought, ”here's a good chance to get that woman out of the way,” so she told her husband that his other wife was a _por_, or witch, and she had taken all the fish away from her. Now, witches are of course very much dreaded, so when the poor woman came home with her heavy load of fish, the villagers killed her with their sticks, and she was changed into a tortoise in the lake.

And now at last the mother of Nang E was chief wife, but do you think she was satisfied? Not a bit of it. She heard that her rival was now a tortoise in the lake, and she determined to kill her again.

Some time after this, as Nang Hsen Gaw was in the jungle watching the cows that belonged to her father, she walked along the edge of the lake and was very much surprised to hear her own name called in familiar tones. She looked around, but could see no one, and she was getting very frightened, thinking that it was perhaps a _hpea_ who wanted to entice her into the thick jungle so that he could devour her, but at last she looked on the ground at her feet and saw it was a tortoise that was speaking to her.

”Nang Hsen Gaw,” it called. ”My daughter, _oie!_ I am your mother who was killed through the wicked acts of my rival, the mother of Nang E. I have arrived at great trouble, and now, instead of being the chief wife of a rich man, I am nothing but a tortoise swimming in the lake. Take pity on me, my daughter, and out of compa.s.sion every day bring me cotton thread and raw cotton, so that I can weave and spin.”