Afterwards the man having descended from the tree to the ground, came to his village with a party of men.
North-western Province.
In Indian Fairy Tales (Thornhill), p. 227, a tiger heard an old woman say, “I do not fear the tiger; what I fear is the dripping; when the rain falls the dripping comes through the thatch and troubles me.” The tiger lay still, dreading the coming of the terrible Dripping. A washerman whose ass had strayed came there, and thinking he had found it struck it with his stick and drove it to the village pound, where he fastened it by the leg, the tiger believing he must be the Dripping. In the morning it begged for mercy, and was allowed to go on promising to leave the district and not eat men.
In Old Deccan Days (M. Frere), p. 206, the same story is repeated, the ass being one belonging to a potter who seized the tiger, beat and kicked it, rode it home, tied it to a post, and went to bed. Next day everyone came to see it, and the Rāja gave the man great rewards, and made him a General.
In Indian Nights’ Entertainment (Swynnerton), p. 211, when a weaver who had been ordered to kill a tiger was entering his house he saw it outside. Saying loudly that he was going to kill the tiger, he added that he did not care for the wet or the tiger, but only for the dripping of the rain from the roof. The tiger was afraid, and slunk into an outhouse, the door of which the weaver immediately shut and locked. Next morning he reported that he had captured it with his hands, without the use of weapons.
In a Malinka story of Senegambia in Contes Soudanais (C. Monteil), p. 137, a hare, while its partner, a hyæna, collected firewood, hid the flesh of a cow that they had killed, in a hollow baobab tree, the entrance being too small to admit the hyæna. The latter returned with an ostrich and saw the hare there. The ostrich came forward to seize it, but when its head was inside the hare slipped a noose over it and half-choked it. In its struggles the ostrich laid an egg, which the hyæna immediately devoured. The hare then induced it to believe that when they were half choked in the same way hyænas laid much better eggs. The hyæna accordingly inserted its head, and was noosed and strangled.
[1] The meaning of the word ḍabukkā is said to be waehi-poda, drop of rain, or drizzle. [↑]