Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/525

Rh the well muddy. The bird complained, but the lizard would not listen to him. At last the lizard said: "Go and call all your birds, and I will go and call all the reptiles under yon tree." So they each called their people, and there was a great fight. The birds flew down and carried away all the snakes, save one, a big fellow, whom they feared. Now he was the priest of the snakes. The crow caught him in his beak, but he dropped him on a stone, and immediately a lot of snakes were produced. The birds were afraid, but the little bird went to the biggest of all birds and said: "Come and kill the priest snake." He said: "But who will feed my young?" "I will," said the little bird. Then the big bird swooped and killed the snake.

[Possibly a reminiscence of the destruction of the snakes by the bird Garuda, the Garula of Jātataka.]

One day a monkey and a jackal met in the jungle, and the jackal said: "I wish I were a monkey, able to climb trees and get any fruit I like." The monkey replied: "I wish I were a jackal, and able to go into men's houses and get rice and meat and chickens and anything else I wanted." Then the monkey said: "Let us each bring the best food we can get, and see whose is the better." When they met the monkey said: "Please give me your food first." The jackal put it into the monkey's hand, and he ran up the tree, ate it all, and gave nothing in return to the jackal. The jackal was very angry, and went off muttering: "I will make you pay for that." So he went and stopped at a patch of wild yams which looked very tasty. The monkey came up and asked: "What are you doing?" "I am only eating the Sahib's sugar cane, and it is very sweet." "Please give me some," said the monkey. "But the Sahib will be angry." "Oh, no, he won't," said the monkey. "Well, come and pick some for yourself." He picked a yam, peeled it, and began to eat it. But it burnt his mouth, and his lips swelled so that he could hardly speak. Then the monkey went to a bees' nest and said to the jackal: "Don't bite that." But the jackal would not mind, and the monkey said: "All right! But don't touch it till I get behind the hill."