Note 26 — FOLK-TALES AND SONGS

About a year later a little daughter was born to the tiger and his wife. When her mother carried her she never cried, but when her father carried her she cried all the time. So the woman said to the tiger, “Why do you make our daughter cry so much?” The tiger replied, “It is because my beard pricks her.” But one day the woman hid herself and watched, and saw the tiger knock his little daughter’s head “tap, tap” against a hearthstone and lick up the blood which dripped down. When she saw this the woman resolved to run away from the tiger, and said to him, “I am going to fetch some wood. Hold the baby till I come back.” But the tiger said, “I am coming too.” And whenever she asked him to look after the baby while she went to get water, or went to the fields or into the jungle, the tiger always replied, “I am coming too,” and never let her out of his sight. At last one day she asked him to look after the child while she went down to the spring to wash its carrying cloth.26 So he took the child and she went down to the spring and set a louse and a flea to wash the cloth, “chuck-chuck, chuck-chuck,” while she ran off and made for her parents’ house. The tiger, thinking the noise made by the louse and the flea was his wife washing the cloth, kept calling out, “The baby is crying. Come up and nurse it.” But when she did not come up he went down to look for himself, and found his wife gone and the louse and the flea there instead. Then he said, “You would play tricks on me, would you?” and crushed the louse with his thumb-nail, but the flea jumped and got away.