The Tiger and the Fox
One day, a long time ago, a fox stood atop a big rock, scratching the sand and dust that had settled on it.
Just then, an arrogant tiger emerged from the woods and saw the fox. “Hello Mrs. fox, what are you doing scrutinizing the ground on such a windy day?” asked the tiger in a tone that seemed to suggest he was making fun of her.
“Please mind your own business,” the fox replied curtly.
This made the tiger angry. He told the fox she had better be polite to him because he could gobble her up in a single mouthful and disgorge her in a second.
“Why, you have no cause to do something like that to me,” the fox said to him, alarmed. The tiger, now quite carried away, roared: “Sure I have. The sand from your rock is getting into my eyes!!”
When she heard this, the fox became very frightened and ran away as fast as she could. On the way she met a pheasant. Gasping, and out of breath, she told the pheasant about the tiger.
Then they both ran for their lives.
That night the pheasant and the fox stayed together. When they were hungry, pheasant laid an egg and they share it between two of them. They ran again the following day, and did the same thing at night.
On the third day the fox told the pheasant, “The tiger will catch up with us soon. We should leave egg for him today so that he doesn’t eat us instead.” The pheasant agreed and promptly laid an egg.
As it grew dark, they prepared themselves for the tiger’s arrival. As was its habit, the pheasant climbed a up tree and went to sleep on a branch. Meanwhile, the fox carefully hid the egg among the dying embers of the fire.
Then she made her bed and, placing a sharp needle standing up right on the pillow and another one similarly under the blanket, went up the tree to join the pheasant. They waited quietly for the tiger to come.
Much later, the tiger appeared through the darkness and began looking around the camp for the fox..Not finding her there, he saw the fire and decided to warm himself.
With his face close to the dying embers they began to blow hard. But the moment he did this, the egg blew up violently in his face, scalding him. “Help me, oh god, my face is burnt!” cried the tiger. “There must have been something horrible in the fire.”
Swearing at himself in pain, he lay down to rest on the readymade bed. There too, the pin on the pillow poked his ears and the pin in the blanket pierced his side.
By this time the tiger was very frighten. “Oh god, have mercy on me!” he cried, “I have surely been cursed. My face is burn and I am being pierced on all sides.” Blinded by the pain, he stumbled on to the tree and attempted to climb to safety. But the half way of the tree, the tiger lost his grip and fall, hit his head on a rock at the foot of the tree, and never opened his eyes again.
How a bull becomes a Tiger.
There once was a family: a father, a mother, a son, and daughter. Sadly, they were all more than a little hard of hearing.
One day the father went to gather firewood in the forest while the son went to work in the fields. And so the boy had been ploughing the fields for some time when a stranger came by and told him that he had lost his bull. “Did you see my bull by any chance?” the man asked.
Now the boy did not hear the man well enough, and thought that he was asking him to sell the family’s only bull.
He refused, shaking his head vigorously.
At noon, when his sister brought him lunch, she found her brother in a foul mood. “A man came by here and made me very angry,” he said to her. “he kept asking me to sell him our precious bull.”
The sister, who was hard of hearing too, thought he was complaining about the food. When she got back home she told their mother that the boy was angry because he did not like the food.
To the mother it seemed that the daughter was telling her the boy was injured by the bull and, without a second thought, she went running off into the forest to fetch the father.
When she found him, she breathlessly told him he must hurry. The bull had injured their son!
The husband, seeing her frantic gestures, thought she was telling him there was a fierce tiger coming their way, and that they should run for their lives. Frightened, he began scrambling up a tree. And that was how the bull became a tiger.
The Cat and the Trader’s Wife.
Once upon a time there lived a travelling trader and his wife. The trader had a cat. Every time he went away the trader always made sure to tell his wife to take special care of the cat, never to leave it thirsty, and never to let it go hungry.
Once it so happened that both the trader’s wife and the cat became pregnant at the same time. However, it was time for the trader to leave on a business trip and, once again, he made his wife promise she would look after the cat well.
He remained her that if it was not for the cat the rats in their stores would have eaten up all the goods he had kept for sale, and his hard labours of trading in distant places like India and Tibet would have gone to waste.
Shortly after the trader left on his trip, the wife brought a lover home and feasted on the best foods from the trader’s store. She even forgot to feed the cat, leave alone treat her well.
One day, in extreme hunger, the cat search all over the house for something to eat. Soon, she spied a small string of dried beef poking out from the edge of a basket, and began to pull on it. But, alas, the wife came into the room, and making a huge fuss, threw her out of the house. Saddened by this cruel treatment the cat hid herself in some bushes not far from the trader’s house and waited for his returns.
Soon, the trader came back. No sooner had he settle in than he began calling for the cat.
When he saw it was not home, he asked his wife for an explanation.
The cunning woman told him that she had fed the cat meat and butter everyday and yet it had shamelessly stolen the special meat from the stock they kept for the king. She said she had chased the cat away as she had feared it might bring trouble from the palace.
Shortly after, the cat came in expecting to be fed and welcomed now that her master was home. But instead, the trader began beating her viciously with a cane! He chased after her shouting madly, “You ungrateful wretch! You have always been given good food and meat and yet you dare to steal from the king’s stock!!”
Seeing that the trader was beyond reason the cat ran up a ladder, and sitting atop the leader, begged with folded hands for the man to listen to what she had to say. The cat told him understood that it was very difficult for him to see who was the liar, her or the woman. But, she said, if he would wait for a few more months he would see for himself. If his wife was speaking the truth, she would have a normal childbirth, the cat said. “But If I’m true,” she added ominously, “I will give birth to human children, and she will have kittens instead.”
Then she jumped down the ladder and ran away. The cat went for days, weeks, and months over mountain after high Mountain, through valley after valley. Finally, when she could not walk any more on account of her advancing maternity she found a small clearing and decided to rest there a while. Gathering twigs and dry grass, she built herself a comfortable shelter. Exhausted, she lay down and, soon, gave birth to two beautiful baby girls.
Back in the trader’s house, after nine months of pregnancy, the woman gave birth to two black and ugly kittens.
The disgusted trader banished his wife and buried the kittens under a three forked path [as was the custom of burying all ill-omened things in the old days].
The Boy and the King.
Long ago there lived a poor boy in a certain village. All the other boys in the village looked down on him and made fun of him. But, unknown to them, he was really quite clever and brave.
One day the king summoned all the boys to the palace.
“Boys,” the king asked, “Who among you can tell me what is the fastest and the quickest thing in all the world?”
A rich man’s son promptly replied that, of all the things in the world, horses were the fastest. An-other said it was the wind. In this fashion, all the other boys had made their answers. Now only the poor boy was left. When their answers. Now only the poor boy was left. When the king turned to him, he said meekly: “your majesty, some people say that there is no comparison to the speed of a river when it comes to fastest thing in the world. There are others who say that birds are faster. But as far as I am concerned, I think there is nothing quicker than the maids of humans.”
“So you think it is the human mind,” the king said looking strangely interested. “We’ll soon see about that. Send your father to me tomorrow.” Early next morning the boy’s father was at the palace. “Your son says it is the mind of humans that is the fastest of all things, and I agree with him,” the king said to him. “However, I have summoned you here because I want to give you a specific task. Here, take these pebbles, sew them together and bring them back to me tomorrow. If you fail you will be executed.”
The poor father was frightened and did not know what to do. “I don’t know what you told the king yesterday but you have made him very angry,” he told his son. “Now he has given me this impossible task. And I have to take back it to him tomorrow!” The boy consoled his father and assured him nothing would happen. “I will go to the king myself,” he said.
The following morning, the boy took a plate full of sand to the king. When the king asked him if his father had sewn the pebbles, the boy replied that his father had not been able to accomplish the task because he did not have the special kind of thread that would sew the pebbles.
But, he said, he would do it himself if the king would kindly make some thread from the sand in his plate.
“How can I make thread out of the sand?” the king asked the boy. The boy quickly replied that just as the king could not make thread from sand, his father too could not sew the pebbles. Amazed by the boy’s pluck, the king asked him to send his father to the palace again the following day. The father was told that since his son had been so impertinent, he would again be given another task, with the same conditions. This time the father was given a male horse and asked to bring a newborn foal the very next day. Once again the boy turned up at the place. This time the king was not pleased to see him. The king shouted at him and said that it was his father he wanted to see and not the impudent boy.
The boy quickly begged the king’s royal pardon and said his father was not able to be there in person because he had just given birth to a baby boy. This reply angered the king even more. “Do you take me for a fool?!!” the king raged. “How can a man give birth?” Quick came the reply: “Just as male horse gives birth to a foal, your majesty.”
When the king saw what the boy meant, he conceded defeat and acknowledged that he had truly been outwitted by the clever boy.
Fate and the Deer.
A long time ago, there lived a deer called Raley and his wife, the doe, Anzo.
Raley had grown old and his horns were large and heavy, on account of which it was hard for him to forage for grass in the forest. So now he spent most of his days just sleeping. But life was peaceful and they were happy when, one day, Nzo gave birth to a very beautiful baby doe. Now Raley had always longed to graze in the tall wheat fields far below in the valley. He smacked his lips and convinced himself that he would be happy only if he could visit those beautiful fields.
“Let’s go down to the warm valley,” he told Anzo one day. “Now that winter is here, it is cold and grass is becoming harder to find. Down there, I can see the wheat fields flourishing and the grains are laden heavily to the ground.”
“We might as well stay here where we belong and not go searching for trouble,” came Anzo’s reply. But in spite of her reservations, Raley would not give up and continued to pester his wife. He complained that up where they lived, he did not get enough food to satisfy his hunger. Down in the broad, flat valley, where it was warm, they [the family] could eat all those delicious grains at leisure. “But you never listen to me,” he accused her.
One night, following this discussion, Anzo dreamed she was a hunter cleaning a tangle of animal intestines in the pool of blood. She told Raley this was a bad omen and that they should keep away from the valley. But Ralay remained unconvinced and still entertained his fantasy of eating in the wheat fields. In fact he grew increasingly more insistent until, finally, she conceded. That night, Ralay, Anzo, and baby doe went down to the valley and entered the fields, eating to their heart’s content. In the early hours of the morning when the rooster began to crow, Anzo told Raley that the rooster had given the signal that they must now leave the fields. “Let’s hide in the bushes for the day and come back for more tonight,” she said to him. So they returned that night, and when they had eaten enough, retreated to the bushes again.
Some days later the local hunter, whose fields it was, came and saw that almost all his entire year’s crop was gone. When he saw the footprints of the three animals, he grew angry and set a trap using Sangda, the dreaded poison-tipped arrow used by hunters.
That night the three of them returned to the fields and ate their fill. But on their way back to the bushes, Raley stumbled onto the trap and released the poison arrow, which wounded him in the leg. The poison began to enter his blood, and he lay dying.
But although Anzo was grief stricken, she could not stay with him. “Look at what has happened,” she said sadly. “I tried to warn you but you wouldn’t listen. Now we have to leave you even though we are sad.” Then Anzo and the little doe fled into the hills.
Down in the valley, the hunter was happy he had finally caught the pest that had been eating his crops. He skinned the dead deer and cleaned it in a pool of blood, just as Anzo had seen in the dream.
A Few Magical Things
There was once was a difficult and troublesome man in a place Pemachen.he caused so much mischief in the land that, one day, the king grew furious and banished him.
The man left, crossing several valleys and mountains, and by nightfall he came to a deserted field where a cold and chilly wind was blowing. In the middle of the field he saw a tree, the trunk of which was carved out in a hollow. In this hollow was dead horse. He served the horse’s head from its body, and tied it to his belt as provision for journey onward. Then he climbed up the tree to retire for night.
As darkness fell a group of demons appeared at the foot of the tree; they were wearing hats made from winnowed rice husk. Sometime later, they were joined by more demons riding paper horses and wearing papers hats.
Soon, the man looked down and saw that they had begun to have a feast. Now the man began to fear that he would be discovered, and he became so frightened that he let the horse’s head fall right into the midst of demons. Fortunately, it fell so suddenly that it frightened the demons and sent them scattering off in all directions into the forest.
The next morning he climbed down the tree and, being hungry, began to search for bits and scraps leftover from the earlier night’s feast. But everything was gone except for a cup made of purest gold, with some dregs of wine still left in it. The man gulped it down and left the cup over- turned on the ground while he explored the surroundings some more.
When he came back to retrieve the cup, he saw to his amazement that there, underneath it, was some meat and butter! Realishing that this was a magic cup, the man was very pleased with his find.
He congratulation himself and continued on his way, and, a while later, came across a man swinging a cane in his hand. “Hey there, what can your leather cane do?,” he asked the man. The man replied that his cane was called Corjuk, and that it could do wonders. “For example, you just have to say so and it can instantly make people give you whatever you want them,” he explained.
In turn, the man from Pemachen told the stranger that he had a golden cup that could provide a person with anything one desired to eat. Would the good man in anyway be interested in exchanging the cane for the cup? The owner of the cane said yes he would. But no sooner was the switch was made then the man from Pemachen asked the cane to make the other man give him back his cup. This was done.
Now the man walked happily along with both the magic cane and the magic cup in his hemchu*, and, shortly after, met a man slinging an iron hammer over his shoulder. He hailed the man and asked him if there was anything that the hammer could do. Oh yes, said the man, indeed it was a very special hammer for if you dropped it build you a nine-storied mansion.
Again, the man from Pemachen told the owner of hammer about the magic cup and said he willing to trade it for the hammer. As soon as they made exchange he sent Corjuk once again to bring him back the cup. Now he had the gold cup, the cane, and the hammer.
Satisfied with the state of affairs the man walked on until he came upon a man carrying a dried length of goat skin. He asked him what it could do, and other man explained that if you just tapped on the skin lightly it would begin drizzling. If you beat it hard, it would bring down rain.
Once more the man from Pemachen suggested that they exchange the man’s goat skin for his amazing, food-providing cup. The deal was struck, and, again, the magic cane flew off and made the man give him the cup. Now, he had a magic cup that provided food, a magic cane that made people do as he wanted, a hammer that could build him a house, and a goat-skin that could made it rain. He decided it was time to go back home.
On reaching Pemachen he dropped the hammer nine times on the ground and built him a beautiful nine-storied mansion from the thin air. He lived happily for a while, but when the king saw the mansion and learned whose it was, he became very angry. He did not like that man he had chased away had come back without his asking. So he sent orders that the house should be burnt down, but when the king’s men set the on fire the man began beating on the magical goat-skin gently at first, and a light rain fell from the sky and extinguished the fire. Then he began beating it harder, and it brought down so much rain that it threatened to wash away all the people and houses in Pemachen.
Needless to say, the king left him alone after that, and the man from Pemachen ceased to be troublemaker, living quietly in mansion, happy with his magical possessions.
*a fold in the Bhutanese dress that allows the people to carry all kinds of sundry things; something akin to a western pocket.
I will be introducing some of these stories within our next International Sessions of the DigiStory Club.It will be great to make some dragon masks, as some activities for the children as well as showing the children some pictures and handicrafts from Bhutan. I wonder if maybe a Bhutanese primary school would like to team up with our club and exchange stories?
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