CXXIV. The Fool and His Dinner.
A man once went to visit his mother-in-law and for dinner they gave him rice with a relish made of young bamboo shoots. The man liked it extremely and thought that it was meat, but he saw no pieces of meat; so he asked his mother-in-law what it was made of; and behind him was a door made of bamboos: so the mother-in-law said, “I have cooked that which is behind you;” and he looked round and saw the door; so he resolved to carry off the door, as it made such good eating, and in the middle of the night he took it off the hinges and ran away with it. In the morning the door was missed and the mother-in-law guessed what had happened and had a hearty laugh.
Meanwhile the man went home with the door and chopped it up and gave the pieces to his wife to cook; the wife said that it was useless to cook dry chips but he insisted and said that her mother had made a beautiful dish of them. So they were cooked and the man sat down to eat; but they were all hard and tasteless; then he scolded his wife and she told him to cook them himself if he was not pleased; so he cooked some himself and the result was the same; and his wife laughed at him and when the villagers heard of it they nicknamed him “Silly”, and used to call the name after him when they met him.
CXXV. The Stingy Daughter.
Once a man went to visit his married daughter: he intended to arrive in time for dinner; so though he passed some edible herbs on the way he did not stop to eat them.
When he arrived he was duly welcomed and after some conversation he told his daughter that he must return the same day; she said “All right, but wait till it gets hot.” (The father understood this to be a metaphorical way of saying “Wait till the dinner is cooked.”) But the daughter was determined not to cook the rice while her father was there: so they sat talking and when the sun was high the daughter went into the yard and felt the ground with her foot and finding it scorching she said “Now father, it is time for you to be going: it has got hot” Then the old man understood that she was not going to give him his dinner. So he took his stick and got up to go.
Now the son-in-law was a great hunter and that day he had killed and brought home a peacock; as he was leaving, the father said “My daughter, if your husband ever brings home a peacock I advise you to cook it with mowah oil cake; that makes it taste very nice.” So directly her father had gone, the woman set to work and cooked the peacock with mowah oil cake; but when her husband and children began to eat it they found it horribly bitter and she herself tasted it and found it uneatable; then she told them that her father had made fun of her and made her spoil all the meat. Her husband asked whether she had cooked rice for her father; and when she said “No” he said that this was the way in which he had punished her; he had had nothing to eat and so he had prevented their having any either; she should entertain all visitors and especially her father. So they threw away the meat and had no dinner.