Folklore of the Santal Parganas - Cecil Henry Bompas (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📗

reveal the matter

to anyone, he told her the secret of the ring. Now her former lover

used still to visit her and one day she sent for him and said that she

would no longer live with Lita, but wished to run away with him. The

lover at first objected that they would be pursued and killed while if

they escaped to a distance he would have nothing to support her with;

but the faithless woman said that there need be no anxiety about that

and she told him about the magic ring and how by means of it they

could provide themselves with a house and everything they wanted. So

they fixed a night for the elopement and on that night when Lita

was asleep his wife quietly drew the ring off his finger and went

out to her lover who was waiting outside and told him to get a goat

from the pen; then they beheaded the goat and went inside and poured

all its blood on the ground under the bed on which Lita was sleeping,

and then having hid the body and head of the goat, they ran away.

 

Towards morning Lita woke up and missed his wife, so he lit a lamp to

look for her and then saw the pool of blood under the bed. At this

sight he was terror stricken. Some enemy had killed and carried off

his wife and he would be charged with the murder. So he lay there

wondering what would happen to him. At last his mother came into the

room to see why he and his wife had not got up as usual and when she

saw the blood she raised a cry; the village headman and chowkidar

were sent for and they questioned Lita, but he could only say that

he knew nothing of what had happened; he did not know what the blood

was, he did not know where his wife was. Thereupon they sent two men

to the house of the wife's parents to see if by any chance she had

run away there and in any case to bring her relations to be present

at the enquiry into her disappearance. When her father and brothers

heard what had happened they at once went to Lita's house in wrath

and abused him as a murderer. They asked why, if his wife had not done

her duty to him, he had not sent her back to them to be chastised and

taught better, instead of murdering her and they went straight to the

magistrate and complained: the magistrate sent police who arrested

Lita and took him before the magistrate.

 

Meanwhile it had become known that not only was Lita's wife missing

but also her lover; and Lita's father presented a petition to the

magistrate bringing this to notice and asserting that the two must

have run away together. Then the magistrate ordered every search to be

made for the missing couple but said that Lita must remain in custody

till they were found, so he was shut up in prison. From prison he made

an application to the magistrate that his three tame animals, the cat

and the otter and the rat might be brought to the place where he was;

the magistrate kindly consented but the animals were not allowed

into the prison. However at night the rat being small made its way

inside and found out Lita, and asked what was to be done. Lita said

that he wanted the three animals to save him from his great danger

as he had saved them; he wanted them to trace his wife and her lover

and recover the ring; they would doubtless find them living in some

gorgeous palace, the gift of the ring.

 

The rat went out and gave the other two Lita's message and they

readily undertook to do their best; so the next morning the three

animals set off. In vain they hunted all over the country, till one

day they came to the bank of the Ganges and there on the other side

they saw a palace shining like gold. At this their hopes revived,

for this might be a palace made by the magic ring. But the cat and

the rat objected that they could not cross the river. The otter said

that he would easily manage that and he took the cat on his back and

the rat climbed on to the back of the cat and so the otter ferried

them both across the river; then they consulted and decided that

it would be safest to wait till the evening before they went to the

palace to see who lived in it. When they looked in in the evening,

they at once recognised Lita's wife and her lover; but these two were

in constant terror of being pursued and when they had had their evening

meal they fastened and bolted every entrance so securely that no one

could gain admittance. Then the cat and the otter told the rat that

he must collect all the rats of the neighbourhood and they must burrow

through the wall and find some way of abstracting the magic ring.

 

So the rat collected a crowd of his friends and in no time they bored

a hole through the wall; then they all began to look for the ring;

they hunted high and low but could not find it; however the cat sat

at the entrance of the hole which they had made and vowed that they

should not come out, unless they got the ring. Then the first rat

climbed on to the bed in which the couple were sleeping and searched

their clothes and examined their fingers and toes but in vain; then

he thought that the woman might have it in her mouth so he climbed

on to her chest and tickled her nose with the tip of his tail; this

made her sneeze and behold she sneezed out the ring which she had

hidden in her mouth. The rat seized it and ran off with it and when

the cat was satisfied that he had really got it, she let him out and

the three friends set off rejoicing on their homeward journey. They

crossed the river in the same way as when they came with the cat

riding on the otter and the rat on the cat: and the rat held the

ring in its mouth. Unfortunately when they were halfway across,

a kite swooped down to try and carry off the rat. Twice it swooped

and missed its grasp but the second time it struck the rat with its

wing and the rat in terror let the ring fall into the river.

 

When they reached the bank the three friends consulted what they

were to do in this fresh misfortune. As the otter was the only one

who could swim it volunteered to look for the ring, so it plunged

into the water and searched the bottom of the river in vain; then it

guessed that a fish must have swallowed the ring and it set to work

to catch every fish it saw and tore them open; at last in the stomach

of a big fish it found the ring, so it brought the fish to the bank

and while they were all rejoicing and eating a little of the fish a

kite swooped down and carried off the fish, ring and all.

 

The three animals watched the kite flying away with the fish; but some

women who were gathering firewood ran after the kite and took the fish

from it and putting it in their basket went home. Then the otter and

the rat said to the cat "Now it is your turn: we have both recovered

the ring once, but we cannot go into the house of these humans. They

will let you go near them easily enough; the ring is in the fish's

stomach, you must watch whether they throw away the stomach or clean

it, and find an opportunity for carrying off the ring."

 

So the cat ran after the women and when they began to cut up the

fish, it kept mewing round them. They threw one or two scraps to it,

but it only sniffed at them and would not eat them; then they began

to wonder what on earth the cat wanted, and at last they threw the

stomach to it. This it seized on gladly and carried it off and tore

it open and found the ring and ran off with it to where the otter

and the rat were waiting. Then the three friends travelled hard for

a day and a night and reached the prison in which Lita was confined.

 

When Lita got the ring he begged his jailer to get him a _seer_

of milk and when it was brought he dropped the ring in it, and said

"I wish the bed on which my faithless wife and her lover are sleeping

to be brought here with them in it this very night" and before morning

the bed was brought to the prison. Then the magistrate was called and

when he saw that the wife was alive he released Lita, and the lover

who had run away with her had to pay Lita double the expenditure

which had been incurred on his marriage, and was fined beside.

 

But Lita married another wife and lived happily with her. And some

time afterwards he called the otter and the cat and the rat to him

and said that he purposed to let them go and before they parted he

would give them anything they wished for. They said that he owed them

nothing, and they made Lita promise to let them know if ever he lost

the ring or fell into trouble, and he promised to help them if ever

their lives were in danger, and one morning he took them to a bazar,

near which was a tank full of fish, and he turned the otter into

the tank and left the cat and the rat to support themselves in the

bazar. The next day he went to see them and the otter came out of

the tank and gave him a fish which it had caught, and the cat brought

him some milk it had stolen, and that was the last he saw of them.

 

 

XXIII. (The Boy Who Found His Father.)

There was once a boy who used always to cheat when playing _Kati_

(pitch and toss) and for this the village boys with whom he played used

to quarrel with him, saying "Fatherless orphan, why do you cheat?" So

one day he asked his mother why they called him that name and whether

his father was really dead. "He is alive" said she "but a long time

ago a rhinoceros carried him off on its horn." Then the boy vowed

that he would go in search of his father and made his mother put him

up provisions for the journey; and he started off taking with him an

iron bow and a big bundle of arrows.

 

He journeyed on all day and at nightfall he came to a village; there he

went up to the house of an old woman to ask for a bed. He stood at the

threshhold and called out to her "Grannie, grannie, open the door." "I

have no son, and no grandchildren to call me grannie," grumbled the

old woman and went to open the door to see who was there, and when she

opened the door and saw him, she said "Ho, you are my grandson." "Yes,"

answered he, "I am your grandchild." So she called him inside and gave

him a bed to sleep on. The old woman was called Hutibudi; and she and

the boy sat up late talking together and then they lay down to sleep;

but in the middle of the night he heard the old woman crunching away

trying to bite his bow to pieces. He asked her what she was eating:

"Some pulse I got from