THE OWL AND THE MOON
HEN the moon is round and full, if you look very carefully at the golden disk you can see in shadowy outline the profile of a beautiful lady. She is leaning forward as if looking down upon our earth, and there is a little smile upon her sweet lips. This fair dame is Putri Balan, the Princess of the Moon, and she smiles because she remembers how once upon a time she cheated old Mr. Owl, her tiresome lover.
Putri Balan, so they tell you in Malay, was always very, very beautiful, as we see her now. Like all the Malay women, Putri Balan loved to chew the spicy betel-nut which turns one's lips a bright scarlet. It is better, so they say, than any kind of candy, and it is considered much nicer and more respectable than chewing-gum. So Putri Balan was not unladylike, although she chewed her betel-nut all night long.
Now, ever since the day when Mr. Owl carelessly let the naughty little Wren escape from prison, the shamed and sorry old fellow had never dared to show his face abroad in daylight. Gradually his eyes grew blurred and blinky, till now he could not see anything by day, even if he were to try.
So it happens that there are many delightful things about which old Mr. Owl does not know,—things which take place while the beautiful sun is shining. But also there are marvelous sights, unknown to early-sleeping birds, which he enjoys all by himself. For at night his queer eyes are wonderfully strong and bright. All day long he sits in his hollow tree, but when the other feathered folk are drowsing upon their roosts, or are snugly rolled up in their little nests, with their heads tucked under their downy wings, old Mr. Owl puts on his round spectacles and goes a-prowling up and down the world through the woods and meadows (like Haroun-al-Rashid in the streets of Bagdad), spying all sorts of queer doings.
And this is how old Mr. Owl happened to see the fair Princess Putri Balan, smiling down from her moon upon the sleeping world of birds who had never seen her and never would see her in all her loveliness.