________________
JUXE, 1894.)
FOLKLORE IN WESTERN INDIA, No. 20.
161
gulp down the bread, for she was very hungry. But a moment after, the cow opened her large mouth again, when lo! it was filled with the daintiest and most wholesome food! The delighted child ate heartily of it, and being greatly refreshed, lay down beside the cow as she would have done by the side of her own mother.
Things went on like this for many months, and the child throve so well on the wholesome food thus strangely provided for her, that her shrewd step-mother noticed the change, and suspected some interference with her plans. So one day, she sent her own little girl after her half-sister to watch her movements, and the little spy came upon her just as she was removing the eatables from the cow's mouth and spreading them before her on some leaves on the ground prior to partaking of them.
Our heroine, suspecting nothing wrong in this unexpected visit of her younger sister, gave her a kind welcome, and invited her to a share of the tempting things spread on the ground. The crafty child readily sat down to the meal, and, when she had eaten her fill, rose to go. Before she left, however, the elder sister made her promise not to tell their mother what she had seen and done in the jungle that day. But the ungrateful little thing could not hold her tongue. She related to her mother all about the miraculous powers of the cow, at which the wicked woman flew into a terrible rage, and vowed to destroy the cow before she was a day older ! Accordingly, when the farmer came home that evening, she complained of a severe headache, and said that a physician, who had visited her, had prescribed as a remedy the fresh hot blood of a cow to be applied to it. The farmer, thereupon, ran out to get a good cow, but she called him back, and suggested that they could not do better than use the tonghold cow that had once belonged to his first wife, and had now grown utterly useless. It was all the same to the henpecked husband, and the poor cow's doom was sealed. The very next morning the butcher was asked to come round with his big sharp knife.
Now, the cow was as wise as any old woman, and when she saw her protégé's little sister trip into the fields, she knew what she was sent for, and felt sure that her end was near and inevitable. So she said to her little companion, as soon as the intruder's back was turned : “My child, it is all very well for you so long as I live, but something tells me that my end is approaching, and when I am gone, who will love you and tend you as I do P"
“Then, I, too, shall die," replied the child, weeping and throwing her arms round the old beast's neck, for certainly she was the only friend she had upon earth.
"No, no, it will not come to that," said the cow soothingly, "if you remember and follow my instructions. If ever I die or am killed, and my carcass thrown to the crows, do you take care, child, to collect some at least of my flesh, and bury it into the ground in some unfrequented corner of your father's land. Do not touch this spot for thirty-one days, but after that period is past, if you find yourself in any trouble, come and dig at the spot again, call on me by name, and I shall help you."
The next morning brought the butcher with his knife to the farmer's door, and before the girl could take the good motherly cow to the meadows, she was dragged out and slaughtered, and a pailful of her fresh warm blood was promptly carried to the mistress of the house, who had remained in bed nursing her headache. She immediately issued orders to the butcher to cut up the carcass of the dead beast into ever so many small fragments, and to scatter them to the fonr winds, so that no one may make the least attempt to put them together and bring her to life again! The butcher did as he was desired, but our little heroine, overwhelmed with grief and despair, stolo quietly out of the house, possessed herself of a piece or two of the flesh and hurriedly buried it, as she had been instructed.
The poor cow had not been dead and gone many days, when the cruel stepmother agnin began to invent plans, by which to dispose of her husband's first-born. Among other things she wonld send her with a large basket into the jungle, and bid her bring it home with her in the evening filled with sticks for fuel.
