Page:Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes, 1879).djvu/267

 Rh story from Russia in which a wolf plays the part of the bear and of our tiger.

IV.—THE CAT THAT COULD NOT BE KILLED.

1. In an unpublished story told us by Gangiyá, a hill-man from near Simla, a cat saves herself from being eaten by a jackal very much in the same way that this cat saved herself from the leopard. The jackal (in Gangiyá's story) ate anything it came across, whether it were dead or alive. One day he met a tiger and said to him, "I will eat you. I will not let you go." "Very good," said the tiger, "eat me." So the jackal ate him up. He went a little further and met a leopard; he said to the leopard, "I will eat you." "Very good," said the leopard. So he ate the leopard.; He went a little further and met a tiny mouse. "Mouse," he said, "I have eaten a tiger and a leopard, and now I will eat you." "Very good," said the mouse. He ate the mouse. He went a little further and met a cat. "I will eat you," said the jackal. The cat answered, "What will it profit you to eat me, who am so small? A little further on you will see a dead buffalo: eat that." So the jackal left the cat and went to eat the buffalo. He walked on and on, but could find no buffalo; and the cat, meanwhile, ran away. The jackal was very angry, and set off to seek the cat, but could not find her. He was furious.

VI.— THE RAT AND THE FROG.

1. This, Mr. Tawney tells me, is in the Hitopadela.

2. Compare the Bohemian "Long-desired child," Naake's Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 226. This child is carved out of a tree-root by a woodman', who brings him home to his wife. They delight in having a child at last. The child eats all the food in the house; his father and mother; a girl with a wheelbarrow full of clover; a peasant, his hay-laden cart, and his cart-horses; a man and his pigs; a shepherd, his flock and dog; lastly, cabbages belonging to an old woman who cuts him in two with her mattock just as he tries to eat her. Out of him jump un-