Wonder Tales from Tibet

by Eleanore Myers Jewett

“Daibang, my child, hearken to me that you may live and not die. I have a plan whereby you may keep your promise to the Khan and yet rid your soul of its heavy secret. Take courage! hasten and get strong, then go forth alone into a far desert place. There find a hole in the ground, or a crevice in a rock, and when you have put your lips down close, speak out the whole matter that is weighing upon your heart. So shall you keep your promise and yet find relief for your soul and live.”

This advice seemed good to Daibang, and so encouraged was he by the hope of ridding himself of his secret that he [[106]]straightway began to mend. In a short time he had recovered strength enough to start forth and carry out the suggestion of his mother. He traveled many miles from home and came at length to a desert place full of rocks and sand, far from every sign of human dwelling. And in the middle of this waste land he found a deep, dark hole. Kneeling upon the ground, Daibang put his lips close to this hole and whispered all his secret. Three times he told it, and then he arose, feeling light-hearted again and well in body and mind.

Now it happened that in this hole lived a marmot, very old and clever, and he heard and understood Daibang’s words, and knew it was the great Khan’s secret he was telling. Being an idle, gossipy fellow, he repeated it all to his friend Echo, and as Echo always repeated everything he heard, whether secret or otherwise, he soon told the wind and the wind bore the Khan’s secret far and wide over the land, and back at last into the palace garden, where [[107]]the Khan himself was sitting. When the monarch heard the wind whispering about his secret, he was filled with rage.

“Truly,” he said to himself, “the whole world must be talking about my secret if even the wind bandies it about! I did wrong to spare the life of that fellow Daibang, and to-morrow before sunrise he shall die!”

So it came about that Daibang was arrested that very day and dragged to the palace by rough soldiers. He was thrust at once into the private council room and there found himself alone with the angry Khan.

“Did I not say that no man on earth could keep a secret faithfully?” he cried sternly to the lad. “And you, though I loved and believed in you, have betrayed your trust, for the very wind that plays in my garden is whispering of that which none but you could tell! Speak, now, if you have aught to say in self-defense, for to-morrow, at daybreak, you shall die!” [[108]]

Daibang had been frightened and confused by the rough handling of the soldiers, but now, hearing of what he was accused and knowing that he had done no wrong, he took courage and told the Khan honestly and without restraint all that he had done.

“Indeed, Sire,” said he at the end, “no human being knows your secret even now, and it was only to save my life and because of the prayers of my mother that I spoke it into a hole in a desert place.”

The Khan was touched by this story, his anger vanished, and he felt again the love in his heart for this faithful lad which he had felt first when he had eaten of his mother’s cakes. They talked a long time together, and the end of it all was that Daibang was made the Khan’s Chief Councilor, and he and his mother lived thereafter in high state and luxury at the royal palace.

You may be sure Daibang and his clever mother were not long in devising a way [[109]]of hiding the Khan’s secret so that he could go abroad among his people like other kings. And never again was a young man chosen to cut the Khan’s hair and afterwards be put to death! That service Daibang kept for himself and remained the Lord High Royal Barber to the end of his days.