Free Folktales from Bengal by Soham Saha

her
eye.
    “ Maid,
something fell in my eye, take it out.”
    The maid twisted a corner
of her cloth, and put it in her eye, carefully taking out a tiny
little basket.
    The princess cried in
delight, ‘What is this? I must know.”
    The tiny basket passed
from hand to hand, but nobody could tell what it was. Finally they
called in the scientists, who put it under a microscope, and said,
“It’s a small basket. There are a few fishes inside, and two men
are wrestling.

The Farmer and the
Horse

    In an ancient village in
Bengal there lived a very poor farmer. He loved his son so much,
that he tried to give him everything he could afford, and
everything that the child wanted. And thus, the child was growing
up to be very unruly, and his wants knew no bounds.
    The land owner’s son was
once passing in front of the farmer’s house on a horse. The
farmer’s son saw that, and went straight to his father.
    “ Father, I
want a horse.”
    The father tried to
reason. “I am a poor man, son. Where would I get a
horse?”
    But the son wouldn’t
listen. He shouted. He screamed. Then he shouted and screamed. Then
he stomped his floor on the ground. Just when everyone thought he
was tired, he started to shout again. When this didn’t work, he
broke his father’s hukka. When all these stopped working, he
stopped eating, and said, “I ain’t eating nothing until you get me
a horse.”
    The farmer was in a
pickle. His son wouldn’t eat at all. So he decided he would try and
buy a horse. He gathered up all the money he had saved, and went to
the market.
    There, he asked the horse
seller, “How much for your horse?”
    The horse seller didn’t
even look at him and said, “Fifty bucks.”
    The farmer looked into
his bundle. He had five bucks. There was no hope of buying the
horse, and he walked towards home, his head hanging low.
    Halfway to his house, he
sat down under a tree, and began to rest. He had nearly dozed off,
when he heard two merchants arguing.
    The first man said. “This
project is going to earn me a lot of cash.”
    The second man said, “All
that is going to earn you is a horse’s egg.”
    Horses don’t lay eggs.
That’s why the phrase, “a horse’s egg”, means zero. But the farmer
was not as educated and smart as most people, so he thought that
there was indeed something as a horse’s egg.
    He began to ask people
around, “Can you tell me where I can get a horse’s egg?”
    A very wicked man heard
him, and said, “Come to my house. I will give you a horse’s egg.
But it is not cheap.”
    The farmer said, “I only
have five bucks on me.”
    The man looked like he
was deep in thought, and said, “Fine. It’s a deal then. But only
because I like your accent.”
    The man took the farmer
to his house, and gave him a melon. He said, “This is a good
horse-egg. Don’t break it before you get home. Otherwise the horse
is going to run away.”
    The farmer was now
happily coming back home with his melon. The melon had a crack on
it, and he could see the red inside. He thought, “I must keep an
eye on it. Otherwise, the steed is going to escape. I must not
sleep. If it gets out, I am going to tie it up with this piece of
rope, and drag it to my barn, and tie it there.”
    Thinking of all these
things, the farmer reached a river. Suddenly, he felt very thirsty.
He kept the melon by the bank, and went down into the river to
drink.
    Meanwhile, a fox had
spotted the melon lying around, and started to eat it. As the
farmer was done drinking the water, the fox was just about done
eating the melon. It was near dusk, and there was little light in
the village path. When the farmer looked back, he saw something
small and fast running away into the forest, leaving the broken
melon.
    “ Oh my, the
steed is escaping!” he cried, and ran after it.
    But it’s not easy to
chase a fox. It ran through every nook and cranny of the forest,
and the farmer got very tired running after it. He saw a hut in the
middle of the