Folklore of the Santal Parganas

by Cecil Henry Bompas

Once upon a time a carpenter made a bedstead, and when it was ready he put it in his verandah. At night he heard the four legs of the bedstead talking together and saying: “We will save the life of anyone who sleeps on this bedstead and protect him from his enemies.” When the carpenter heard this, he decided not to part with the bed for less than a hundred rupees. So next day he went out to try and get this price for the bed, but people laughed at him and said that no one could pay such a price but the Raja; so he went to the Raja and the Raja asked why he wanted one hundred rupees for a bedstead that was apparently worth only five or six annas. The carpenter answered that the bed would protect its owner from all enemies; the Raja doubted at first but as the man persisted in his story, he agreed to buy the bed, but he stipulated that if he found the story about it not to be true, he should take back his money.

One night the king lay awake on the bed and he heard the legs of the bed talking, so he lay still and listened: and they said that the Raja was in danger and that they must try to save him. So one leg loosened itself from the bed and went away outside and it found a tiger which had come to eat the Raja, and it beat the tiger to death, and then came back and fixed itself into its place again. Soon a second leg said that it would go outside; so it went and that leg met a leopard and a bear and it beat them to death and returned. Then the third leg said that it was its turn, and it went outside and it found four burglars digging a hole through the wall of the palace, and it set upon them and broke their legs and left them lying there. When this one returned, the fourth leg went out and it heard a voice in the sky saying: “The Raja is very cunning, I will send a snake which shall hide in his shoe and when he puts the shoe on in the morning, it will bite him and he will die.” When this leg came back, each one told the others what it had seen and done, and the Raja heard them and lay awake till morning, and at dawn he called his servants and sent them outside the palace and there they found the tiger and leopard and bear lying dead, and the four thieves with their legs broken. Then the Raja believed what the legs had said and he would not get up but first ordered his servants to make a fire in the courtyard and he had all his shoes thrown into the fire and then he got up.

After this the Raja ordered that great care was to be taken of the bedstead and that anyone who sat on it should be put to death; and he himself used not to sleep in it anymore but he kept it in his bedroom that it might protect him.

XXXV. The Ghormuhas.

Ghormuhas have heads like horses and bodies and arms like men and their legs are shaped like men’s but they have only one leg each, and they eat human beings.

One day a young man named Somai was hunting a deer and the deer ran away to the country of the Ghormuhas and Somai pursued it, and the Ghormuhas caught him and took him home to eat. First they smoked him for two or three days so that all the vermin were driven out of his body and clothes and then they proceeded to fatten him; they fed him well every day on rice cooked with turmeric.

Somai saw how they dealt with their other victims: they tied them hand and foot and threw them alive into a pot of boiling oil and when they were cooked they hung the bodies up in the doorway and would take a bite as they passed in and out; the liver and heart and brains they cooked separately. They used to eat their own parents also: for when a father or mother grew old they would throw them on to the roof of the house and when they rolled down and were killed they would say to their friends, “The pumpkin growing on our roof has got ripe and fallen off and burst, let us come and eat it;” and then they had a feast.

Somai saw all this and was very frightened. The Ghormuhas could run very fast and they made Somai run a race with them every day and their plan was that they would eat him when he was strong enough to beat them in the race. In the course of time he came to beat them in running on the road; then they said that they would make him run in the fields and, if he beat them there, they meant to eat him.

Somai found out their plan and he decided to try and run away; if he stayed he would be eaten, so if they caught him when he tried to run away he would be no worse off. So the first day they raced in the fields Somai was winning but he remembered and stopped himself and let himself be beaten that day. But he resolved to try and escape the next day and the Ghorarahas had decided to eat him that day whatever happened. So when the race began, Somai set off towards the lower lands where the rice fields were embanked and he jumped the embankments, but the Ghormuhas who pursued him could not jump well and tumbled and fell; and thus he ran away to his own country and made good his escape. And it was he who told men what Ghormuhas are like and how they live.