In the Kolhān tales (Bompas) appended to Folklore of the Santal Parganas, p. 468, a girl and her brother, fearing their father wished to kill them, ran away and lived in the jungle. While the brother was hunting, a Raja met with the sister and wanted to marry her; thinking the youth would object the Raja persuaded the girl to try to get him killed. She pretended to be ill, and told him she could not recover unless he brought a flower which grew in a lake. When the boy was swimming to the flower a gigantic fish swallowed him; but a Rākshasa friend drank the pool dry, caught the fish, and took out the boy alive. The Raja carried off the girl, but was defeated by the youth and Rākshasa and some animal friends, gave the youth half his kingdom, and married him to his own daughter.
In the actions of the animals, expressive of their grief at the death of the Prince, there is a striking resemblance to those ascribed to the Werewolf in William of Palerne (E.E.T.S., ed. Skeat), on discovering that the child he was rearing was missing:
For reuliche (ruefully) gan he rore · and rente al his hide,
And fret (gnawed) oft of the erthe · and fel doun on swowe,
And made the most dool (sorrow) · that man mizt diuise.
The English translation of this twelfth-century Romance is said to date from about A.D. 1350.
In vol. i, p. 130, a dog shows its grief by rolling about and howling, and in vol. iii, p. 446, a man rolls on the ground in feigned sorrow.
[1] Aṇḍa bera gaesuwāya, beat the proclamation tom-toms. [↑]