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.