LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| "Each year at the Feast of Lights ... she prayed" | [10] |
| "The man standing at the top of the tree was the long-lost brother" | [37] |
| "Again the cunning hare deceived the tiger" | [63] |
| "'I am nothing but a tortoise swimming in the lake'" | [68] |
| "On his way he saw what seemed to be a bed of flowers" | [79] |
FOLK LORE STORIES
"A LAUNG KHIT."[1]
Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in the State of Lai Hka. She was a very pious woman and always gave the best rice and puc to the priests as they walked, rice chattie in hand, through the city in the early morning. Every year when the girls and boys went to the river and filled their chatties with water to throw over the pagodas and idols to insure a good rainy season and abundant crops, she always had the largest bucket of the clearest water and threw it higher than anybody else. She carried the sweetest flowers to the zayat every evening, and on worship days took rice in the prettiest of cups made of banana leaves and offered to the Gautamas in the idol-house.
But she was not happy. When her neighbors went to the pagodas they had their little ones tied upon their backs or running at their sides, but she had no child whom she could take with her, none to whom she could tell stories of the great Lord Sa Kyah who rules over the spirits in the hpea country, and so she was sad. She was getting old too, and often envied the women who lived near who had bright boys to run errands and girls to help in the house. Each year at the Feast of Lights, when she sent her little candle floating down the river, she prayed for a child, but in vain.
At last she made a pilgrimage to a pagoda where folks said was a parah who would give anything that was asked of him. Bright and early she set out, and on her head as an offering she carried an image of a tiger and one of a man, and when she arrived at the pagoda she offered the images and prayed for a son.
While she was praying at the pagoda, Lord Sa Kyah heard her, took pity on her, and promised her a son. But, alas! when he was born, to his mother's great sorrow, instead of being the beautiful boy she hoped for he was nothing but a frog.