THE FOLK-TALES OF INDONESIA AND INDO-CHINA. 121 



dry pit. Up came the tiger and asked what he was doing. The 

 hare answered, " Don't yon know ? To-morrow morning the sky 

 is going to fall: I stay here to avoid being crushed." Said the 

 tiger, " Pity me ! Let me get into the pit with yon." " I won't " 

 said the hare. The tiger beseeched the hare from dawn till noon, 

 when at last the hare consented. The hare told the tiger to cut a 

 stick and give it to him. He prodded the tiger. " If you play the 

 fool," said the tiger; "I'll make you jump up there, where the 

 sky will crush you." The hare persists and is made to jump up 

 out of the pit. " I'm of! for a drink," says the hare, " and Pll 

 return presently." The hare goes to a house where men are feast- 

 ing and cries to them to go to the pit and kill the tiger. The men 

 run to the pit. The hare enters the house, eats all the cakes and 

 collects cups and bowls and hides them under a mat. He wraps 

 a red kerchief round his head and beats a drum. The tiger roars 

 and the men run home to see their cakes have disappeared. They 

 think the hare is under the mat, beat it with sticks and smash 

 their crockery ! They see the hare on the roof, cannot reach him 

 and set fire to the house. The hare leaps on to another roof and 

 escapes. The hare sees the mistress of the house, where he had 

 upset the feast, going to market to buy cakes bananas and sugar. 

 He awaits her return, and pretends to be lying dead on the road. 

 The woman picks him up and puts him in her basket, where he 

 devours her purchases and skips away, when she opens the lid. 

 The hare meets the elephant, who is weeping. " Why do you 

 weep ? " asked he. " I and the tiger agreed to roar," said the 

 elephant ; " if I trumpeted so as to terrify all the beasts and birds 

 of the forest, I was to eat the tiger : if he roared so as to terrify 

 them, he was to eat me. Pie won and is going to eat me to-morrow 

 morning." The hare replied, " Let me save you. Get me betel 

 and to-morrow morning, when I run under you and strike you with 

 my horns, pretend to fall down dead and roll over as I butt you." 

 The elephant did so : the hare butted him as he rolled and spat the 

 blood-red betel juice over his body. The tiger saw it and thought 

 the hare had gored the elephant, and he was afraid and fled away. 

 The tiger met a tortoise and told him of what had happened. The 

 tortoise said " Tie me to you with a rattan and I'll take you to 

 kill the hare." The tiger did so; they met the hare and the tiger 

 fled, knocking the tortoise insensible against a tree stump. Present- 

 ly the tortoise revived. He was bleeding and he said to the tiger, 

 " Lick this betel juice off me." The tiger licked, thinking it was 

 blood.' 



For the story of the hare stumbling into a pit and crying out 

 that he was there to avoid the falling sky, there are parallels in 

 my tales recorded in Journal Xo. 45, and in Klinkert's Hikayat 

 PelandoJc DjinaJca (Leiden 1885) — which is reprinted in Dussek's 

 Hikayat Pelandok. And there is a parallel for the Cham story of 

 the hare saving the elephant from the tiger in Skeat's Fables and 

 Folk-tales. Skeat's story relates how elephant and tiger wagered 

 to make monkey fall from a tree; whoever succeeded was to be 



R. A. Soc, No. 76, 1917. 



