Tom-tom Beater. North-western Province.

A variant related by a Potter is nearly similar, except that both persons instituted lawsuits for the recovery of the elephant and the waterpot. The judge who tried the cases was the celebrated Mariyada Raman, termed by the narrator "Mariyaddurame," a word which suggests the name Amir Abd ur-Rahman.

There is also a Chinese variant, given in Chinese Nights' Entertainments (A. M. Fielde), p. 111, in which a dishonest old woman lent a newly-married girl her cat, in order to kill the mice. The cat ran home, and the woman then applied for its return, praised its excellence, and estimated its value at two hundred ounces of silver. The girl discovered that her father-in-law had once lent the woman an old wooden ladle, and when the old woman called again about the cat she reminded her of it, and demanded its return. The cases were taken before a magistrate. The girl claimed that the ladle was made from a branch which fell down from the moon, and never diminished the food, oil, or money from which anything was taken by means of it; and she asserted that her father-in-law had refused an offer of three thousand ounces of silver for it. The magistrate decided that the two claims balanced each other.

NO. 204

HOW A GIRL TOOK GRUEL

In a certain country there are a girl and the girl’s father, it is said. While they were there, one day the man went to plough, saying to the girl, "Bring gruel to the rice field." They spring across a stream as they go to the rice field.

The girl, cooking gruel, pouring it into a wide-mouthed cooking-pot and placing the pot on her head, goes away to the field. While going there she met a Prince near the river. The girl asked at the Prince’s hand, "Where are you going?" Having told him to sit down and given to him from the gruel, she said, "Go to our house and wait until the time when I come after giving the gruel to father;" and placing the gruel pot on her head she went to the far bank of the river.

Then the Prince asked, "Are you coming immediately?"

The Princess said, "Should [it] come [I] shall not come; should [it] not come, I shall come." [96]

The Prince got into his mind, "This meant indeed (lit., said), 'Should water come in the river I cannot come; should water not come I will come.'"

Again the Prince asked, "On which road go you to your house?"

Then the girl unfastened her hair knot; having unloosed it she went to the rice field.

Afterwards the Prince thought to himself, "Because of the girl’s unloosing her hair knot she goes near the Kitul palm tree indeed." [97]

The Prince having gone near the Kitul tree to the girl’s home, remained lying down in the veranda until the girl came.

The girl having given the gruel came home. Having come there and cooked for the Prince she gave him to eat. Then the girl’s father came. After that, the girl and the Prince having married remained there.

While they were [there], one day the Prince said, "I must go to our city." Then the girl also having said that she must go, as the girl and the girl’s father and the Prince, the three persons, were going along there was a rice field.

The girl’s father asked at the hand of the Prince, "Son-in-law, is this rice field a cultivated rice field, or an unworked rice field?"

Then the Prince said, "What of its being cultivated! If its corners and angles are not cut this field is an unworked one."

When they were going still a little distance there was a heap of fence sticks. Concerning it the Prince asked, "Father-in-law, are these cut fence-sticks, or uncut fence-sticks?"

Then the father-in-law says, "What of their being cut! If they are not sharpened these are uncut sticks."

Well then, having gone in that manner, and gone to the Prince’s city, he made the girl and the girl’s father stay in a calf house near the palace, saying, "This indeed is our house."

The Prince having gone to the palace said at the hand of the Prince’s mother, "Mother, I have come, calling [a wife] from such and such a city. The Princess is in that calf house. Call her and come back after going [there]."

After that, the Queen having gone near the calf house, when she looked a light had fallen throughout the whole of the calf house. The girl was in the house. After that the Queen, calling the girl and the girl’s father, came to the palace.

Well then, the girl, and the girl’s father, and the Prince remained at the palace.

Tom-tom Beater. North-western Province.