One day, when he had been losing money, the boy went home and was cross because his supper was not ready.
“I am hurrying to get the seeds out of this cotton,” said the grandmother, “and as soon as I sell it, I will buy us some food.”
At this the boy fell into a rage, and he picked up some cocoanut shells and threw them at his grandmother. Then she became angry and began to whip him with her spindle, when suddenly he was changed into an ugly animal, and the cotton became hair which covered his body, while the stick itself became his tail.
As soon as the boy found that he had become an ugly creature he ran down into the town and began whipping his companions, the gamblers, with his tail, and immediately they were turned into animals like himself.
Then the people would no longer have them in the town, but drove them out. They went to the forest where they lived in the trees, and ever since they have been known as monkeys.[14]
The Virtue of the Cocoanut
Visayan
One day a man took his blow-gun[15]and his dog and went to the forest to hunt. As he was making his way through the thick woods he chanced upon a young cocoanut tree growing in the ground.
It was the first tree of this kind that he had ever seen, and it seemed so peculiar to him that he stopped to look at it.
When he had gone some distance farther, his attention was attracted by a noisy bird in a tree, and he shot it with his blow-gun. By and by he took aim at a large monkey, which mocked him from another treetop, and that, too, fell dead at his feet.