Note 16 — FOLK-TALES AND SONGS

Once upon a time a man called Kimongthang called his sisters’ husbands’ relations together and gave them rice beer to drink and said to them, “I have cut a chentung tree ready for a sacrificial post.16 Go and drag it in for me, but do not let a single leaf fall to the ground.” So they went and began to drag the tree, but the leaves were half withered and they kept letting them fall. Then, determined not to let the leaves fall, they tied them onto the twigs and set to work to drag the tree again. In spite of this all the leaves fell off. Then they were ashamed to go back to the village and meet Kimongthang. So they fled away into the jungle, and the men became mynas and called “Kyon, kyon.”17 But the women ground up rice flour to make rice beer and smeared it on their foreheads and called out, “Woka, woka,” and became gibbons. That is why the gibbon now has a white forehead.18