you must be careful in the forest
Auriea
a at e8z.org
Thu May 6 12:01:52 CEST 2004
The Ogress Queen
An Indian (Kashmiri) Tale
People tell a story about a king who had seven wives but no children.
When he married the first woman, he thought she would bear him a son.
When she didn't, he married a second with the same hope. When she too
turned out to be barren, he married a third, then a fourth, and then
the others. But no son and heir was born to make his heart glad and to
sit on the throne after him.
Overwhelmed by grief, he was walking in a neighboring wood one day when
he saw a woman of supernatural beauty.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"I'm very miserable," he said. "I have seven wives but no son and heir
to call my own. I came to this wood today hoping to meet some holy man
who might bless me with a son."
"And you expect to find such a person here in these lonely woods?" she
asked, laughing. "Only I live here. But I can help you. What will you
give me if I give you what you wish?"
"Give me a son and you can have half my country."
"I don't want your gold or your country. I want you. Marry me, and you
shall have a son. and heir."
The king agreed, took the beautiful woman to his palace, and married
her that very week.
Very soon after that, all the other wives of the king became pregnant.
However, the king's joy did not last long. The beautiful woman whom he
had married was really an ogress. She had appeared before the king as a
lovely woman only to deceive him and work mischief in his palace. Every
night, when the entire royal household was fast asleep, she would rise
and go to the stables and pens, and there she would eat an elephant, a
horse or two, some sheep, or a camel. Once her hunger for raw meat and
thirst for blood were satisfied, she would return to her room and
behave as if nothing had happened. At first the king's servants were
afraid to tell him they were missing some animals. But when the toll
increased and more and more animals were taken every night, they had to
go to him. He gave strict orders to protect the palace grounds and
appointed guards everywhere. But the animals continued to disappear,
and nobody knew how.
One night, the king was pacing in his room, not knowing what to do. His
eighth and most beautiful wife said, "What will you give me if I
discover the thief?"
"Anything. Everything," said the king.
"Very well, then. You rest now, and I'll show you the real culprits in
the morning."
The king was soon fast asleep, and the wicked queen left the bedchamber
and went straight to the sheep pens. She killed a sheep, filled an
earthen pot with its blood, returned to the palace, went to the
bedrooms of the other seven wives of the king, and stained their mouths
and clothes with the blood she had brought. Then she went and lay down
in the royal bedroom where the king was still sleeping. At dawn, she
woke him up and said to him, "You won't believe this, but your other
wives, all seven of them, are the true culprits. They eat live animals.
They are not human beings; they are all ogresses. Beware of them. You
too are in danger. Go now and see if what I say is not true."
The king did so, and when he saw the bloodstained mouths and clothes of
his queens, he feared for his life and flew into a rage. He ordered
that their eyes be put out at once and that they be thrown down a big
dry well outside the city and left there to starve to death. And it was
done.
The very next week, one of them gave birth to a son. The starving
queens, nearly dead of hunger, couldn't help eating the newborn child
for food. When another queen had a son, he too was eaten. As each of
the other queens gave birth to a son, that child was devoured in turn.
The seventh wife, who was the last to give birth, did not eat her
portions of the other wives' children, but kept them till her own son
was born. When he was born, she begged them not to kill him but take
the portions she had saved. So this child alone was spared.
The baby grew and became a strong and beautiful boy. When he was six
years old, the seven women thought they should show him a bit of the
outer world. But how? The well was deep, and its sides were
perpendicular. At last one of them thought of a way. They stood on each
other's heads, and the one who stood on the top of all took the boy
with her and put him on the bank at the well's mouth. The little fellow
ran here and there and finally to the palace nearby, entered the
kitchen, and begged for some food. He got a lot of scraps. He ate some
of the food and brought the rest to his mother and the king's other
wives.
This continued for some time. He grew bigger and taller. One morning
the cook asked him to stay and prepare the dishes for the king. The
cook's mother had just died and he had to go and arrange for the
cremation of the body. The clever boy promised to do his best, and the
cook left. That day the king was particularly pleased with the dishes.
Everything was rightly cooked, nicely seasoned, and beautifully served.
In the evening the cook returned. The king sent for him and
complimented him on the excellent food he had prepared that day and
asked him to cook like that every day. The cook was an honest man and
confessed that he had been absent most of the day because his mother
had died. He told the king that he had hired a boy to do the cooking
that day. When he heard this, the king was surprised and commanded the
cook to employ the boy regularly in the kitchen. From then on, there
was a great difference in the king's meals and the service, and His
Majesty was more and more pleased with the boy and sent him many
presents. The boy took them and all the food he could carry to his
mother and the king's other wives.
On the way to the well each day, he had to pass a fakir, who always
blessed him and asked for alms and always received something. Some
years had passed this way, and the boy had grown up to be a handsome
young man, when one day by chance the wicked queen saw him. She was
struck by his good looks. She asked him who he was and where he came
from. The boy didn't know whom he was talking to and so told her
everything about himself and his mother and the other queens in the
well. And from that moment on, the wicked woman began to plot against
his life. She pretended to be sick and called in a doctor. She bribed
him to tell the king that she was mortally ill and that nothing but the
milk of a tigress would cure her.
"My love, what's this I hear?" said the king when he went to see his
wife. "The doctor says you're very ill, and that you should drink the
milk of a tigress. But how can we get it? Who will dare milk a
tigress?"
"I think I know someone who is brave enough to milk a tigress
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the lad who serves the cook in the palace kitchen. He is brave and
faithful, and he'll do anything you ask him to do, out of gratitude for
all you've done for him."
When the king asked the young man to go and get the milk of a tigress,
he readily agreed. When he started out the next day, against all the
women's wails and protests, he met the fakir on the way. When the fakir
heard of his dangerous errand, he said to the young man, "Don't go. Who
are you to take on such derring-do?" But the fellow was determined to
win the king's favor and he was also eager for adventure. The fakir
finally said, "All right, then follow my advice and you'll succeed.
I'll tell you where to go. When you meet the tigress, aim a small arrow
at one of her teats. When the arrow strikes her, she will ask you why
you shot at her. Then tell her that you didn't mean to kill her, but
only to make a bigger hole in her teats so that she could feed her cubs
more quickly. Tell her that you pitied the cubs, who looked weak and
sickly as if they needed more milk." Then, with the fakir's blessing,
he went to the forest to look for the tigress.
The young man soon saw a tigress with cubs, aimed an arrow at one of
the teats, and struck it. The tigress angrily asked him why he had
attacked her. He replied as the fakir had told him to, and added that
the queen was dangerously ill and needed the tigress's milk for her
cure. "The queen!" said the tigress. "Let her die! Don't you know she
is an ogress? Keep away from her. She'll kill you and eat you."
"I'm not afraid," said the young man. "Her Majesty is not my enemy."
"Very well, I'll give you some of my milk, but beware of the queen.
Look here," said the tigress, taking him to an immense rock, "I'll let
a drop of my milk fall on this rock and you'll see what happens." As
soon as she did so, the rock split into a thousand pieces! "You see the
power of my milk. Yet if that queen were to drink the whole of my milk,
it would not have the slightest effect on her. She is an ogress, I tell
you. Go and see for yourself."
The young man returned and gave the milk to the king, who took it to
his wife. She drank all of it in one gulp and pretended to be cured.
The king was very impressed with the young man and promoted him to a
higher position. But the queen was determined to put an end to him and
was still plotting. After some days, she pretended to be ill again, and
told the king, "I'm getting ill again, but don't worry about me. My
grandfather lives in the same jungle as the tigress who gave the young
man her milk. He has a special medicine that would cure me. Please ask
the brave young man to go and get it for me. "
So the young man started out again, and when he passed the fakir, the
fakir said to him, "Where are you going?" The young man told him.
"Don't go," said the fakir. "This man is an ogre and will certainly
kill you." But the young man was not to be talked out of it. "You must
go? Then go, but listen to me first. When you see the ogre, call him
Grandfather. He will ask you to scratch his back, which you must do
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but do it very roughly."
The young man promised, and went. The jungle was fearful and dense and
he thought he would never reach the ogre's house. At last he saw him,
and cried out, "Grandfather, I'm your daughter's son. My mother is ill
and she says you have the right medicine for her. She has sent me for
it."
"All right," said the ogre, "I'll give it to you. But first come here
and scratch my back. It's itching terribly." The ogre lied, for his
back did not itch. He only wanted to see whether or not the young
fellow was the true son of an ogress. When the young man dug his nails
into the old ogre's flesh and made as if he would scratch some of it
off, the ogre asked him to stop, gave him the medicine, patted him, and
sent him back. When the king gave the medicine to his wife, she was
secretly full of rage. But the king was now more pleased with the young
man than ever and gave him large gifts.
The wicked queen was now at her wits' end to know what to do with such
a lad. She wanted him out of the way but she didn't want the king to
know it. The fellow had escaped from the claws of a tigress and the
clutches of her grandfather. How did he do it? What could she do to
him? Finally she decided to send him to her grandmother, a terrible old
ogress who lived in a house in the woods. "This time, he will not come
back," she said to herself, and said to the king, "I've a very valuable
comb at my grandmother's place. Could you send the young man to bring
it to me? I'll give him a letter to take to my grandmother." The king
agreed and the lad started out, passing the fakir's place as usual.
When he told him where he was going and showed him the queen's letter,
the fakir said, "Let me read it."
When he had read it, he said, "You're going there to be killed. This
letter is an order for your death. Listen to this: The bearer is my
enemy. I cannot rest as long as he is alive. Kill him as soon as this
reaches you."
The boy shook a little when he heard these terrible words, but he
didn't wish to break his promise to the king even if it cost him his
life. So the fakir tore up the queen's letter and wrote a new one which
said, "This is my son. I want him to meet his great-grandmother. Take
care of him and show him a good time." The fakir then gave the new
letter to him and said, "Call the woman Grandma, and don't be afraid of
her."
The young man walked on and on till he reached the old ogress' house.
He called her Grandma and gave her the letter. The old hag read the
letter and hugged and kissed him, and asked how her granddaughter and
her royal husband were doing. She attended to him in all sorts of ways
and gave him every valuable thing she could think of. Among other
things, she gave him a bar of soap that became a huge mountain when it
was thrown to the grounds a jar full of needles that became a hill
bristling with thorns when thrown down, and a jar of water that became
a wide lake when spilled on the ground She also showed him various
secret things and explained their meaning: seven fine cocks, a spinning
wheel, a pigeon, a starling, and a bottle of medicine.
"These seven cocks," she said, "contain the lives of your seven uncles,
who are in different parts of the world. No power can hurt them as long
as these seven cocks are safe. That's why I keep them here. The
spinning wheel contains my life. If it's broken, I'll be broken and
will die. Otherwise, I'll live forever. The pigeon contains your
grandfather's life, and the starling your mother's. As long as they
live, nothing can harm your grandfather or your mother. And this
medicine can give sight to the blind."
The young man thanked the ogress for all the things she had given him
and for all the things she had shown him. In the morning, when the
ogress went to bathe in the river, he took the seven cocks and the
pigeon and killed them, and dashed the spinning wheel to the ground and
broke it to pieces. As he destroyed the birds and the spinning wheel,
the ogress, the ogre, and their seven sons in different parts of the
world perished, making horrible sounds. Then he put the starling in a
cage, took it and the precious medicine for restoring sight to the
blind, and started back for the king's palace. His first stop was at
the well, where he gave the eye medicine to his mother and the other
women and restored their eyesight. They all clambered out of the well
and went with him to the palace. He asked them to wait in one of the
rooms while he went to the king and prepared him for their coming.
"O king," he said, "I've many secrets to reveal. Please hear me. Your
wife is a ogress, and has been plotting against my life because she
knows I am the son of one of your wives. You remember the seven queens
you threw into a well at her instigation? I am your son by the seventh
queen. Your eighth queen, the ogress, is afraid you'll discover one day
soon who I am and that I'll become heir to the throne. She wants me
dead. I've just slain her father and mother and seven brothers, and now
I'll kill her. Her life is in this starling." Saying this, he twisted
the neck of the bird, and the wicked queen died on the spot with a
broken neck. And when she died, her original, ghastly ogress form
returned to her as she lay sprawled on the ground. "Now come with me,"
he said to his father, and took him to his seven queens. "Here are your
true wives. There were seven sons born to your house, but six of them
died to satisfy the pangs of hunger in that well of death. Only I have
survived."
"Oh, what have I done!" cried the king. "I was deceived, I was blind,
and I've done terrible things to my innocent wives." And he wept
bitterly.
He gave his kingdom into the hands of his only son, who governed it
wisely. The young king also conquered the surrounding countries with
the help of the magic bar of soap, the needles, and the water that the
ogress had given him. The old king spent the rest of his days happily
with his seven good wives.
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