THERE was once a great drought in the land. For weeks and months not a
drop of rain fell; and the sun beat down, and dried up the whole
country, so that there was no water to be found. Now there was a certain
pond in that country; and as day after day the sun blazed, the water
sank lower and lower, until it was hardly an inch deep. Numbers of Frogs
used to live in this pond; but as the water dried the Frogs died, so
that the dry mud on the banks of the pond was covered all over with dead
bodies of Frogs.
There came a Jackal out of the forest. He was glad to see this pool,
because the pool where he used to drink had been quite dried up. So he
made a little platform of mud, and stuck up four posts at the four
corners; and then he gathered bundles of dry grass, and put them upon
the top of the four posts for a thatch. Then his eye fell on the corpses
of Frogs lying about; and being a foolish animal, he thought these
corpses were uncommonly pretty. And what do you think he did? He
gathered a lot of the dead Frogs and hung a fringe of them all round the
thatch; and in each of his ears he hung a dead Frog, like an earring.
From far and near swarms of Rats used to come to this pond for drinking,
since it was the only water to be found for a long distance, and all the
rest was dried up. Then the Jackal kept guard over the pool; and not a
drop might any Rat so much as taste, unless he would first bow down and
worship the Jackal, and sing the following psalm, which the Jackal made
up himself:--
"A temple all of gold I found,
With golden lamps hung all around;
And see! the God himself is here,
With two big pearls in either ear."
Even a Rat can tell a dead Frog from a pearl, but willy nilly he needs
must sing it, or else no water. So when the Rat had sung this psalm, and
bowed himself down three times before the Jackal, worshipping him as if
he were a God, he was allowed to go down and take a sip of the water.
One day, what should come down to the water to drink but an Ox with one
eye.
"Ho! ho! one-eyed Ox!" screamed the Jackal, "not a drop till you sing
your psalm."
The Ox blinked his one eye stupidly, and looked round. "What psalm?"
asked the one-eyed Ox.
"Mine," said the Jackal, who was very proud of his psalm, "my own
composition." Then he sang it over to the Ox, that he might hear it.
"'A temple all of gold I found--'
"That's this, you know," he explained, pointing to the scraggy thatch--
"A temple all of gold I found,
With golden lamps hung all around;
And see! the God himself is here,
With two big pearls in either ear."
"Ah," said the one-eyed Ox, "I'm rather stupid, I fear, and it will take
me a minute or two to learn that psalm. It's a mighty fine psalm, that;
I never heard the like in church. Suppose I say it over to myself while
I'm a-drinking? that will save time, and it would be a thousand pities
to spoil a thing like that."
This flattered the Jackal so much that he agreed.
One-eye went down to the pool, and took a long, long pull at the water.
Then he came out of the water, and went slowly up to the Jackal, as he
was sitting under his thatch, with its string of dead Frogs, and the two
Frogs in the Jackal's ears.
"Now then, booby!" the Jackal said, "look sharp, the God is waiting."