Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/373

Rh dragon was reared is as follows. Li Chung-kan, alias Mawing, when a boy was one day going to school. Seeing a small snake on the roadside, he picked it up and put it in his sleeve. Arrived at the school, he placed it in a drawer until he went home, when he took it with him. Arrived at his house, he carefully hid it under his bed. This he continued to do every day, feeding the snake morning and evening, until at last it became quite attached to him. His pet was, however, ultimately discovered by his teacher, who ordered him to let it loose on the Kwai Fung Hill. He did as he was told, but, though released, the snake kept coming back to Li Chung-kan’s house to be fed, or Chung-kan used to repair to the hillside to feed it there. As time went on, the snake and his master became full-grown, and as Li Chung-kan had to go to the capital to attend the examinations, they had to part. Before leaving, however, Chung-kan had some wheat planted at the foot of the hill, and told the snake that it could live on it, but that it must not injure any living thing, and that, if it acted in accordance with his directions, he could ensure its ultimately ascending to heaven as a dragon. Chung-kan was successful in his examinations, and, having obtained his degree, returned to his home to worship his ancestors. On his arrival the snake was falsely accused of having devoured animals belonging to the neighbourhood and of being a great pest to the district. These reports so incensed Chung-kan, that he seized a knife, and, going to the retreat of the snake, cut off its tail. Hence the name it now bears, “the bob-tailed dragon”.

On one occasion a distinguished scholar was paying a visit to the head of the Taoist sect, “the Preceptor of Heaven,” in order to consult him as to a lucky day for putting in the main beam of a house he was building. While they were engaged in conversation, a visitor was announced, and a ferocious-looking person, dressed in the guise of a Tamên runner, entered. The head of the Taoist sect asked the scholar to withdraw while he