Fables and Folk-Tales from an Eastern Forest

[1] From the beginning Tûpai the Squirrel and Rûan the Creeping Fish were ever close and faithful friends. And one day Tûpai's wife fell sick and Tûpai enquired of the Medicine-man what medicine he should give her, and the Medicine-man prescribed the egg of a fowl. But Tûpai could not by any means obtain it. Therefore he told Rûan the Fish of his trouble, and Rûan promised to help him, if he had to die for it.

Next morning therefore Rûan swam into a bamboo water-tube [2] which a woman was filling in the river and was carried back inside it to the house, where it was left leaning against the house-wall close to the roosting-place of the fowls. And at evening Rûan crept out of the tube and taking into his mouth an egg out of a hen's nest [3] carried it back with him into the tube again.

Next morning the woman once more took the water-tube down to the river to fill it. Then Rûan swam out of the tube into the river again and brought the egg rejoicing to his friend Tûpai. And the Squirrel's wife on receiving the egg immediately recovered.

Another day Rûan's wife fell ill and the Medicine-man prescribed the heart of a crocodile, but Rûan likewise had no means of obtaining it. Therefore Tûpai the Squirrel bit a hole in a coconut growing on a palm which overhung the river and crept inside it. And presently he looked out and bit through the stalk of the coconut so that it fell into the river and was swallowed by a crocodile. Tûpai himself lying coiled inside it. And presently he crept out of the coconut into the crocodile's stomach, and bit out its heart. And the crocodile struggled greatly till it came to the shore and died there. Then the Squirrel crept out of the crocodile's jaws and gave the heart to Rûan the Fish. And Rûan's wife recovered immediately also.

[1] This tale was told me as a proverbial example of devoted friendship, by one of the local Malays at a village on the banks of the Siong River, a long way up-country in the State of Kedah.

The Squirrel is the common striped squirrel of the Malay Peninsula, and the Fish is an 'ophiocephalus,' a kind of swamp-fish that is able both to walk and climb by opening and shutting its gill-cases. I have here called it the creeping fish to distinguish it from the walking mud-fish of Africa, the point of the story in the present case being moreover its ability to creep out of the tube; but it is best known locally for its walking powers, of which I have myself been a witness.

[2] A bamboo water-tube. These water-tubes are the so-called joints (or inter-nodes) of a big species of bamboo with long inter-nodes. They are often as much as 5 ft. to 6 ft. in length (by 4 or 5 inches in diameter); and when I was at Siong (where this story was collected), I used regularly to see (in the early morning) the women of the hamlet carrying them down to the water and refilling them there. They are used by jungle Malays, I believe, throughout the Peninsula.

[3] Nesting-places for the hens are often made at the top of similar bamboos, the upper end of the tube being split in many places all round and opened out in the form of a basket, which is lined and filled with a little earth, forming a species of nest for the hen to roost in. Like the water-bamboos they are usually kept close to the house.