Folklore of the Santal Parganas | Page 6

and seek with a lizard which also lived there. The lizard hid and the leopard looked every where for it in vain. At last the leopard sat down to rest and it chanced that he sat right on top of the lizard which was hiding in a hole. The lizard thought that the leopard meant to hurt it and in revenge bit him and fastened on to his rump so that he could not get it off, so that day when the boys came calling out "Ho, leopard," he ran towards them to get their help: but when they saw the leopard they all fled for their lives. Ledha however could not run fast because he was lame, and the leopard headed him off and begged him to remove the lizard. This he did after the leopard had sworn not to eat him, and before they parted the leopard made him promise to tell no one that the lizard had bitten him, and said that if he told then he would be carried off and eaten. So Ledha rejoined his companions and told them nothing of what had passed between him and the leopard. But that night when they had all gone to bed, Ledha's sister-in-law began to worry him to tell her what the leopard had said to him, when it had caught him. He told her that the leopard would eat him if he told, but she coaxed him and said that no one could hear them inside the house; so at last he told her that he had taken off a lizard which was hanging on to its rump. Then they went to sleep; but the leopard was hiding at the back of the house and heard all that they said; and when they were all asleep, he crept in and carried off Ledha's bed with Ledha in it on his head. When Ledha woke up towards morning, he found himself being carried through dense jungle and he quietly pulled himself up into one of the trees which overhung the path. Thus when the leopard put down the bed and was going to eat Ledha, he found it empty. So he went back on his track and by and bye came to the tree in which Ledha was hiding. The leopard begged Ledha to come down, as he had something to say to him, and promised not to eat him; but directly Ledha reached the ground the leopard said "Now I am going to eat you." Ledha was powerless, so he only asked to be allowed to have one chew of tobacco before he died; the leopard assented and Ledha felt in his cloth for his tobacco, but the tobacco did not come out easily and as Ledha felt about for it the dry tobacco leaves crackled; the leopard asked what the crackling sound was, and Ledha said "That is the lizard which bit you yesterday;" then the leopard got into a terrible fright and ran away as hard as he could, calling out "Don't let it loose: Don't let it loose."
So Ledha was saved from the leopard, but he did not know his way out of the jungle. He wandered about, till he came to the place where the wild buffaloes used to sleep at night, and he swept up the place and made it clean and then took refuge in a hollow tree; he stayed there some days, sweeping up the place daily and supporting himself on the fruit of a fig-tree. At last one day the buffaloes left one cow behind to watch and see who it was who swept up their sleeping place. The cow pretended to be too ill to rise, and Ledha after watching for some time came out and swept the ground as usual, and then tried to pull the sick cow up by the tail; but she would not move so he went back to his hollow tree. When the buffaloes returned they heard that it was a kindhearted man who cleaned their sleeping place; so they called Ledha out and said that they would keep him as their servant to clean their sleeping place and to scrub them when they bathed in the river; they made him taste the milk of all the cows and appointed the cow whose milk he liked best to supply him. Thenceforward he used to wander about with the buffaloes and he made a flute and used to play on it.
One day after scrubbing the buffaloes he washed his head in the river and some of his hairs came out; so he wrapped them up in a leaf and set the packet to float down the stream. Lower down the stream two princesses were bathing with their attendants, and when they saw the