Blossoms of jungle tree I saw and brought, and on the rock I strew.
They dried and dried until they shrank; my children then I beat
and slew.
Now, crying, "Kuturu, Son, ku!" your mother vainly calls to you.
Kaele gase pub daekala, gale genat waenuwa.
Weli weli adu-wena turu, daruwan gasala maeruwa.
"Kuturu, pute, ku,"[10] kiya, amma a[n]da-gasati.
In Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. ii, p. 228, two
pigeons collected ripe fruits and filled their nest with them. During
drought which followed they shrank considerably; the male pigeon
charged the female with eating them alone, and although she denied
it he said, "If it were not that you have eaten them alone how could
they have decreased?" and pecked her to death. When rain which fell
afterwards caused the fruits to enlarge to their former size, the
bird saw it, and felt remorse, and "then began to call his female
with plaintive cries."
In the Arabian Nights (Lady Burton's ed., vol. iv, p. 117) there is a
similar story. A pair of pigeons collected a store of wheat and barley
during winter, but when summer came it was shrivelled with the heat,
and shrank. The male pigeon charged the hen with eating it; when she
denied it he beat and pecked her till he killed her. In the next cold
season the grain swelled out again as at first; and the male pigeon,
seeing that the hen was innocent, mourned over her, refused food,
and died of grief. Sir R. Burton refers also to a variant in the Book
of Sindibad, and Kalilah and Damnah.
In the last line of the text of the verse on the preceding page,
if Kuturu be corrected to Kuturu, and if the bird's cry is to be
interpreted, the meaning might be, "[my] falsehood is great, O Son,
[and my] guilt."