Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/202

180 (washer)woman came down to the river to ply her trade, and saw the handsome boy. The childless woman took pity on him, but, despite her entreaties, he would tell her nothing of his tale till she had fetched his baby brother across. She swam across with her wooden wash tub, and brought the baby across in it. She took the boys home, and, being childless, she and her husband adopted them. It chanced that some Doms caught a huge fish in their nets, and took it as a present to the king of the land, which in the tale is called Sapra. When the fish was cut open, the king and his courtiers were amazed to see therein, in the attitude of meditation, the saintly prince, to whom the monarch at once offered his throne and his daughter. The holy man would have neither, but asked only for a place to build him a house and for food. Then it fell out that the boat of the traders came to the place where the dhobis lived, and moored at their ghat. By local custom it fell to the turn of the foster-parents of the two boys to watch the boat, but the boys begged hard to be allowed to relieve their aged friends of this task. They sat on the bank by a fire, and talked together of their lost parents, and of a sudden heard their mother's voice calling them to the boat. They released her from the chest in which the traders had thrown her, intending to present her to the king. The traders haled them to the king's court for a breach of duty, but they told their tale, and the king sent for the saintly prince, who hastened to claim his wife and sons. The wicked Mohammedan merchant and the Chinese jeweller forfeited all their wealth as a punishment for their cruelty to the poor princess. This moving tale is obviously of foreign origin, but, while it starts from Kubo on the east, it takes us to the rivers on the west, for there are no Doms in Burma. In Assam the Doms are fishermen; elsewhere they carry out the dead, and are sweepers or professional thieves. The great river must be the Brahmaputra. Yet