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OCTOBER, 1921]
FOLK-TALES OF THE CAR NICOBARESE
285
Now those roads do nothing else to-day than wait until the plantains get ripe and red; and then at once they begin to eat them up. This was the disobedient man, who went into the jungle on a "rest-day."
XVI.-WILD PIGS. Formerly wild pigs were very numerous in the island ; and once it happened that when & man was travelling alone in the jungle, and without a spear, he unfortunately came across a herd of them. The pigs rushed at him, and ripped him up; and so he died.
As soon as the man's elder brother heard the news, he determined to avenge the man's death by a wholesale slaughter of the wild pigs. So he spent one whole day and night in sharpening his blade (dah). Then he tied it on some boughs; and it went right through them at one blow.
Still he was not satisfied, and went on sharpening his dah. Then as he sat, he turned the blade upwards, and was examining it, when a fly happened to settle down upon it, and was at once cut in two. "Ah ! yes !" says he, "now it will do."
Then he went into the jungle, and made out of a bamboo a long handle for his blade, which he fixed securely cross-wise (as a scythe-blade is fixed). Then he got up into a big tree and began to call the beasts, crying out rhythmically, "Fierce wild pigs! Fierce wild pigs !"
A drove of them soon came hurrying along, and got up on the top of one another's backs in their eagerness to get at the man; and they could just manage to touch him. Meanwhile he kept giving stabs with his dah into the paunches of the beasts. Flop ! flop ! flop ! and. one after another the wild pigs dropped down dead.
Then he repeated the performance, again calling the wild pigs and stabbing them when they came; and so a second herd perished.
A third time he was slaughtering the wild pigs, when the "devil " (or spirit) who owned the pigs, said to him: “Stop ! that's enough! I cannot stand this."
"Oh ! no," said the man, "We will have another go." Then, after he had slaughtered the third herd, the man came down from the tree and carried the pigs home to his house There he made a fire and began to singe the carcases; for this is often the only cooking the meat gets. But when he turned any carcase over to do the other side, the bristles sprang up again on the side which he had just singed, though he had done it so thoroughly as to have sufficiently cooked the meat.
As this was repeatedly the case, the man gave up the job, and was about to go up into his house, when the "devil" (or spirit) who was determined to take vengeance for the slaughter of his pigs, said to the man, "How would you like a snake ?"
"Oh!” said the man, "I would swim out into the deep sea." "Then, how would you like a shark ?" asked the" devil." "In that case I should be done for," said the man.
Whilst he was still at the bottom of the stairs, a snake bit him; he went up the ladder, and instantaneously dropped over dead, as he stepped across the threshold.
XVII.-THE DISCOVERY OF CHOWRA. Long long ago, the ancients who lived here did not know that there was any other country in the world besides this island; for it is situated in the middle of the ocean.
Now it happened that some people once made a toy canoe from the spathe of the 00008nut. They finished it off very carefully, and fixed sails for it. And after they had done this, they put into it a cargo of small yams; and then they floated off the canoe in the direction of Chowra.
