Indian Antiquary Vol 03

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 17

JANUARY, 1874.)
BENGALI FOLKLORE.
give it he leaped off his horse and drew out a out, "Feed her well and she will give you knife and ripped up her belly, and seeing her plenty of rupees." So they fed her well, but bowels come out he ran away. The girl began not a rupee or even a pice did they get from to cry loudly, and her father came up runningand ber: so they determined to take her back to the asked, “Who has ripped up your belly in this farmer's house and return her. When they way?” She replied, “A man on horseback arrived they told the farmer about the cow, and came and asked me to give him some water, and he said "Very well, have something to eat first." as I was bringing it he dismounted and ripped So they consented and all sat down to eat, and up my belly with a knife." The girl's father the farmer took the stick with which he drove went and fetched a needle and sewed her belly his plough-bullocks in his hand and began to eat, up tight, and in course of time she recovered. ! and when his wife went out to bring more food After some days the king of the country died he struck her with the stick and said, "Be and his elephant was turned loose; he happened changed into a girl and bring in the curry," and to meet the Pali woman, and lifted her up with so it came to pass; and this happened several his trunk and put her on his back, and took times. When the men saw this wonderful thing her to the king's palace, and in a few days the they forgot all about the cow; but the truth of king's son made her acquaintance and married it was that the farmer had a little daughter and her. After the marriage he discovered that she had been sent in with the food. The men she was the Pali woman, but no one would offered the farmer 150 rupees for the stick, and believe him, till one day the king's mother he sold it them, and told them that when their saw the mark on her belly and asked what it wives came to bring their food they must beat was, and she related how it all happened. Then them well, and they would recover their former the king's son said, “The decree of God can youth and beauty. When they were near home never be made of no effect."
they all began to quarrel as to which should The Farmer who outwitted the six men. test the stick first; at last one of them took it
There was once a farmer's wife who had a home, and when his wife was bringing his food tame paddy-bird, and when the farmer went to struck her so violently with it that she died, but plough, his wife used to fasten a hookah, clean- he told no one abont it; and this happened ing-stick, tobacco, chillum, flint and steel to the to them all, so they all lost their wives. After body of the bird, and it would fly with them to that they went in a body and burnt down the the field when the farmer was working, and farmer's house, and he collected a large quantity he unfastened all the things and smoked his of the ashes and put them in bags and placed hookah. One day six men who were passing them on a bullock's back and went away. On his that way on their road to the cutcherry saw the road he met a number of men driving bullocks bird act in this way and offered the farmer 300 laden with rupees, and asked them where they rupees for it, and he agreed to sell it; and the were going, and said he wished to go with them ; six men took it and tied 300 rupees to its body they said they were going to the house of a and said, "You paddy-bird, take these three certain banker at Rangpur, and he said he was hundred rupees to the cutcherry.” But the taking his bullock to the same place. So they bird, instead of going to the cutcherry, went to went on together for some distance, and then the farmer's house, and he took all the money i cooked their food under a tree and went to and made a cow eat a hundred rupees of it. In sleep; but the farmer put two bags of rupees on the meantime the men went to the cutcherry, the back of his bullock, leaving the iwo bags of and, not finding the paddy-bird, returned to the ashes in their place, and then took to flight. farmer's house, where they saw the cow reliev- After that he sent the first of the six men with ing herself of the rupees she had eaten, and for- the bags to take home to his wife, and he put got all about the paddy-bird ; then the farmer some gnm underneath one of the bags so that washed the cowdung and took out the money. some of the rupecs stuck toit, and so he found out Seeing the extraordinary virtue the cow pos- the contents. The six men then went to the sessed, they offered the farmer 5,000 rupees for fariner's house and asked him how he had her, and he agreed, and they took her away. The obtained the money; he said he had got it by farmer came a little way after them and called selling ashes, and that if they wished for money