Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/524

 490 Collectanea.

[These tales may have a toteniistic origin. For totemism in Assam, see Sir J. Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, 1910, vol. ii., p. 318 sqq. ; iv., 295 scjq.]

XII. A Tale of a Sftake.

One day a girl went to work in the field, and on her way she met a snake on the path. The snake would not let her pass until she said : " Do not bite me and I will marry you." So at last she said it, and the snake let her go and afterwards married her. Then he bit her in the breast and ornaments grew there, and he bit her in the leg and she got leggings. Another girl saw this, and she too met a snake. To him she said : " Let us marry." So she took him and put him in her basket, but he said nothing, and bit her in the arm so that she died.

[The Envious Friend, a very widespread tale, of which the variants are endless.]

XIII. The Boiled Crab.

One day a little bird went to work in her field, and called all her companions to help her. Among them came the crab. At noon the little bird called her friends from the field to the field- house. She put a pot on the fire, and perching on the rim laid an egg into the pot for each of her friends to eat. The next day they all went to work in the crab's field. He brought nothing for dinner, because he had seen what the little bird had done, and meant to imitate her. When the pot was boihng in the field- house, he perched on the rim and tried to lay an egg, but he fell in and was boiled to death. Meanwhile his friends were hoping he would ask them to dinner. But as they got tired of waiting, one of them went irito the field-house and saw the crab boiled in the pot. He went and told the others. So they all came and ate the crab.

[This belongs to the same cycle as the last.]

XIV. The Birds and the Snakes.

Once upon a time a lizard and a little bird went shares],in a well. Whenever the lizard went to draw water he used to make