Bengal Fairy Tales. Francis Bradley Bradley-Birt
he desired to marry, and that he depended upon their selection. They said that there was a bride, in every way worthy of him, who, however, would not in consequence of a vow listen to the proposal, except upon the receipt of twenty-five thousand rupees in advance. Golami at once loosened his purse-strings, and handed over the sum, not a pice of which, however, found its way into the girl's hands, the entire sum being divided among his false friends. To keep Golami still in their power, they found for him a girl of the vilest and most treacherous nature, and her he brought into his house as his wife, though he knew her to be a bad woman as soon as he cast eyes upon her.
On the third day after the marriage, Golami, who had been out, returned from his banker with a vast sum of money and some jewels and gems of the first water. These he had previously received from his employer, and had deposited in the bank. He showed them to his wife, and told her that they were the effects of a robbery perpetrated by him on a merchant travelling along the highway, and that a royal proclamation had gone forth offering a rich reward to anyone giving information against him. He again went out on pretence of some business, and his wife, taking advantage of his absence, went to the police, and informed them against her husband. Though they had heard nothing of the robbery, or of any royal proclamation, they believed her when they came to know that she was the wife of the offender, and at once sent men with her for his arrest.
They found him at home waiting for the police, and they at once laid hold of him, and took him to the Emperor, who, instead of leaving the judgment of capital offences, of which highway robbery was one, in the hands of the judges appointed by him, took cognizance of them himself. And, after a mere formal trial, Golami was sentenced to death, and sent to prison to wait there till the moment of execution.
The fact was noised abroad, and the prisoner's former mistress, hearing of it, hastened to him and comforted him. She engaged counsel to defend her lover with all the money she had, and Moulvis to offer prayers for him. Not content with these services, she volunteered to remain in prison with him, if thereby she could in any way cheer him up.
Golami sent message after message to his friends, but they neither came to see him, nor sent a word of recognition. They had become his wife's lovers, and with her they merrily talked over his troubles.
At length the day of execution dawned. It happened also to be the last day of the three months allowed for the solution of the questions sent to Raja Prithu on which Golami was led in chains to the place where he was to be executed. There was a large crowd of spectators, in the midst of whom were his false wife and friends. The poor mistress, whose heart was breaking at the sad prospect before him, was waiting in a corner, with swimming eyes raised to the face of him whom she loved more than life. The block of wood, on which his head was to be placed before the falling of the fatal axe, was ready and the Emperor arrived to give the final command.
But that command was not to be given, for the man under sentence of death cried out that he had a word for the ears of the Emperor, to whom it was of paramount importance. Being told to speak his thoughts, he said that they must be whispered in the Emperor's ears, so that others might not hear them. The Emperor, fearing some foul play, would not at first allow the near approach of him whom he had sentenced to death, but he was at length prevailed upon by the prime minister to do so. Golami, led close up to him, with his hands pinioned and his legs bound, brought his face near to the Emperor's ears and whispered, "I am no breaker of the law. I am as innocent as your Majesty. I was commissioned to answer the four questions you sent for solution to Raja Prithu. Will you permit me to give you the answers privately in your ear, or publicly so that your subjects may know them?"
The Emperor thinking that, if there was truth in what the man said, he had wronged him grievously, and that therefore it would be just to exonerate and even to reward him in public, bade Golami give the answers aloud. Thereupon the latter cried out, "Reverend Sire, here are the solutions of your questions. The answers I have found in my experiences here. As to the first question, 'Can there be poison in nectar?' Look at that ugly creature, superficially so attractive, waiting there to see me die. She is my wife, and instead of the nectar which I expected to find in her, I have found poison. To try her I gave out that I had committed a robbery, and thus made myself liable to be punished with death, and no sooner had she heard me than she sped to the police to denounce me.
"With regard to the second question, I have found nectar in a vessel of poison. That woman there, of evil repute, whose heart is supposed to contain poison, has been to me like life-giving nectar. She has done for me a service as great even as that which a dutiful wife could have done.
"As to the third question, my false friends there are dogs in human form. They ate at my expense, even the morsels that I rejected were seized by them voraciously, and just as a dog licks the feet of its master, but, when rabid, bites him to death, so have these men flattered me, and when maddened by greed of money, and a desire to enjoy the uninterrupted companionship of the vile woman whom I made my wife, have rushed at me to bite me to death.
"And as to whether a donkey can possibly rule a kingdom, I pray your Majesty to look at yourself. You are an Emperor, but have you not proved yourself a donkey, in sentencing me to death before thorough investigation?"
The Emperor looked utterly abashed, and remained speechless. At length he invited Golami into the palace, entertained him for several days, and then sent him away with rich presents. But these were nothing in comparison with what Prithu gave him after his return. He bestowed upon him the half of his kingdom, and the hand of his daughter, though the bridegroom was a Mahomedan, and she a Hindu. Caste restrictions were not so strong then as in later times, and so it was not difficult for the Raja to reward his deliverer in this signal manner.
Our story ends here, for Bhabaghuray has not told us what afterwards befell the several actors in this drama.
II PADMALOCHAN, THE WEAVER
THERE is a legend in Bengal, that weavers, as a class, are very stupid people, there being this peculiar element in their composition, that while very expert in matters of weaving and selling the products of their labour, they betray an extraordinary lack of common sense in every other respect.
Padmalochan was a weaver, and from what we have said, it is needless to add that he was a first-class dolt. One day, being at leisure, he was seated on his haunches at his door and regaling himself with the fumes of his hooka, when he beheld the well-known palmist of his village passing by. After the usual form of salutation, the weaver asked the palmist to tell him his fortune, especially calculating the time of his death. As, however, the reader of fortune made his living by his trade, and knew his customer to be too stingy to pay even a pice for his labour, he in ill-humour took up the weaver's right palm, and dropped it again in a second, saying that he would die the very moment a line of thread should pass out from behind his body. The parties then separated, the palmist to practise his art among those more liberal, and the weaver to work at his loom.
Several days passed after this prophecy concerning the weaver's time of exit from the world, when, as chance would have it, the thread round his shuttle got so entangled in his loin cloth, that it was difficult to extricate it. The more he tried to draw it out, the more did it lengthen itself, till at last, being sure that this was the fulfilment of the prophecy
PADMALOCHAN THE WEAVER
concerning his death, he rolled on the ground, lamenting in the bitterest terms his untimely departure from the world, and the subsequent wretchedness of his dear wife, whom he must leave a helpless widow. His lamentations grew so loud that they drew his better half to the scene. She, who had been apprised of the palmist's calculation, was beyond herself with grief, and fell by her husband's side, railing against the gods for this unjust and cruel visitation that they were inflicting upon