Long ages ago a man and his wife were living on the borders of a
flourishing kingdom. The wife was a good housewife, who occupied
herself with looking after the land and the herds; but the husband
was a dull, idle man, who did nothing but eat, drink, and sleep from
morning to night and from night to morning. One day, when his wife
could no longer endure to see him going on thus indolently, she cried
out to him, "Leave off thus idling thyself; get up and gird thyself
like a man, and seek employment. Behold, thy father's inheritance
is well nigh spent; the time is come that thou find the means to eke
it out."
And when he weakly asked her in return, "Wherein shall I seek to eke
it out?" she answered him, "How should I be able to tell this thing,
but at least get thee up and make some endeavour; get thee up and
look round the place and see what thou canst find," and with that
she went out to her work in the field.
When she had repeated these words many days, he at last went out one
day, and, not taking the trouble to bethink him what he should do,
he did just what his wife had said, and went to look round the place
to see what he could find. As he wandered about, he came to a spot on
which a tribe of cattle-herds had lately been encamped (1), and a fox,
a dog, and a bird were there fighting about something. Approaching
to see for what they contended, they all escaped in fear, and he was
left in possession of their booty, which was a sheep's paunch full
of butter (2). This he brought home and laid up in store. When his
wife came home and asked him whence it was, he told her he had found
it left on the camping-place of a family of herdsmen who had passed
that way seeking pasturage.
"Well it is to be a man!" exclaimed his wife. "I may toil all day
without making so much; but you go but out one day of your whole life
for one moment of time, and straightway you find all this wealth."
When the man heard these words, he took courage and thought he should
be fit to find better fortune still; so he said to his wife, "Give
me now only a good horse and clothes meet, and a dog, and a bow and
arrows, and you shall see what I can do."
The woman was glad to hear him show so much resolution, so she made
haste and gave him all the things that he required, and added a thick
felt cloak to keep out the rain, and a cap for his head, and helped
him to get on his horse, and slung his bow over his shoulder.
Thus he rode out over many a broad plain, but without purpose or
knowledge of whither he went, nor did he fall in with any living
creature whatever for many days. At last, riding over a vast steppe,
he espied at some distance a fox.
"Ha!" he exclaimed, "there is one of my friends of last time. To be
sure, there is no sheep's paunch of butter this time, but if I could
only kill him his skin would make a nice warm cap."
As he had never learnt to draw a bow, his arrows were of no service,
so he set his horse trotting after the fox; but the fox got away faster
than he could follow, and took refuge in the hole of a marmot (3).
"Now I have you!" he cried, and, dismounting from his horse, he took
off all his clothes to have freer use of his limbs and bound them on
his saddle; the dog he tied to the bridle of the horse, and stopped
the mouth of the hole with his cap; then he took a great stone and
endeavoured with heavy blows on the earth to crush the fox.
But the fox, taking fright at the noise, rushed out with such impetus
that it carried off the cap on its head. The dog, seeing it run,
gave chase, and the horse was forced to follow the dog, as they were
both tied together; so off he galloped, carrying on his saddle every
thing the man had in the world, and leaving him stretched on the
ground without a thread of covering.
Getting up, he wandered on to the banks of a river which formed
the boundary of the kingdom of a rich and powerful Khan. Going into
this Khan's stable, he laid himself down under the straw and covered
himself completely, so that no one could see him. Here he was warmed
and well rested.
As he lay there the Khan's beautiful daughter came out to take the
air, and before she went in again she dropped the Khan's talisman and
passed on without perceiving her loss. Though the bauble was precious
in itself for the jewels which adorned it, and precious also to the
Khan for its powers in preserving his life (4), and worthy therefore
to claim a reward, the man was too indolent to get up out of the
straw to pick it up, so he let it lie.
After sunset the Khan's herds came in from grazing, and the cow-wench,
when she had shut them into the stable, swept up the yard without
heeding the talisman, which thus got thrown on to a dung-heap. This
the man saw, but still bestirred him not to recover it.
The next day there was great stir and noise in the place; the Khan
sent out messengers into every district far and near to say that
the Khan's beautiful daughter had lost his talisman, and promising
rewards to whoso should restore it.
After this too, he ordered the great trumpet, which was only blown on
occasion of promulgating the laws of the kingdom, to be sounded and
proclamation to be made, calling on all the wise men and soothsayers
of the kingdom to exercise their cunning art, and divine the place
where the talisman should lay concealed.
All this the man heard as he lay under the straw, but yet he bestirred
him not. Early in the morning, however, men came to litter the
place for the kine with fresh straw; and these men, finding him,
bid him turn out. Now that it became a necessity to stir himself,
he bethought him of the talisman; and when the men asked him whence
he was, he answered "I am a soothsayer come to divine the place where
lies the Khan's talisman."
Hearing that, they told him to come along to the Khan. "But I have no
clothes," replied the man. So they went and told the Khan, saying,
"Here is a soothsayer lying in the straw of the stable, who is come
to divine where the Khan's talisman lies hid, but he cannot appear
before the Khan because he has no clothes."
"Take this apparel to him," said the Khan, "and bring him hither
to me."
When he came before the Khan, the Khan asked him what he required to
perform his divination.
"Let there be given me," answered the man, "a pig's head, a piece
of silk stuff woven of five colours, (5) and a large Baling (6);
these are the things which I require for the divination."
All these things being given him, he set up the pig's head on a
pedestal of wood, and adorned it with the silk stuff woven of five
colours, and put the Baling-cake in its mouth. Then he sat down over
against it, as if sunk in earnest contemplation. Then on the day which
had been named in the Khan's proclamation for the day of divination,
which was the third day, all the people being assembled, assuming the
air of a diviner of dreams, he wrapped himself in a long mantle, and
made as though he was questioning the pig's head. As all the people
passed, he seemed to gain the answer from the pig's head,--
"The talisman is not with this one," and "The talisman is not with
that one," so that he had many people on his side glad to be thus
pronounced free from all charge of harbouring the Khan's talisman.
At last he made a sign that this kind of divination was ended; and
pronounced that the Khan's talisman was not in possession of any man.
"And now," said he, "let us try the divination of the earth." With
that, he set out to make a circuit of the Khan's dwelling. Stepping on
and on from place to place, he continued to seem consulting the pig's
head, till he came to the place in the yard where the dung-heap was;
and here, assuming an imposing attitude, he turned round, and said
mysteriously, "Here somewhere must be found the Khan's talisman." But
when he had turned the heap over, and brought the talisman itself to
light, the people knew not how to contain themselves for wonderment,
and went about crying,--
"The Pig's head diviner hath divined wonderful things! The Pig's head
diviner hath divined wonderful things!"