How A Dead Tiger Killed The Princess

: Fables From the Forest
: Laos Folk-lore Of Farther India

There was once a king who had a daughter at whose birth a wise man

foretold that she would be killed by a tiger when she was a maiden

grown. In order that no animal might approach her, the king built her a

house set upon one huge pillar, and there she and her attendants ever

dwelt.



And it fell upon a day, when the daughter was well grown, that one of

the hunters, whose labor it was to kill the tigers of t
e country,

brought a dead one to the palace of the king. The princess, seeing her

dead enemy, came down from her tower and plucked a whisker from the

tiger, and, as she blew her breath on it, she cried, "I do not fear

thee, O my enemy, for thou art dead!" But the poison, which is in the

whiskers of a tiger, entered into the blood of the princess, and she

died.



Then did the king make a proclamation, and sent messengers throughout

all his realm, commanding that, when a tiger was killed, all his

whiskers be immediately pulled out and burned, that a tiger may not be

able to slay when dead; and until this day, the people obey the command

of the king.



More

;