v FOLK-LORE 107

Chhawng'-chili and the JRulpui.

Once upon a time there was a girl called Chhawng-chili, who
was in her father's jhum. At the bottom of the jhum in a
hollow tree a snake had its nest, and the snake loved Chawng-
chili very much. Whenever they went to the jhum she used to
send her younger sister to call the snake, who used to come up
and coil itself up in Chhawng-chili's lap. The little sister was
very much afraid of the snake and did not dare tell her father.
When the girls were going to the jhum, their parents always
used to wrap up some rice and vegetables for them to take with
them. On account of her fear of the snake, the little sister
could not eat anything. Then her sister and the snake ate up
all the rice and the vegetables, and the little sister stayed in
the jhum house all day and got very thin, and her parents said
to her, " Oh, little one, why are you getting so thin?" but she
always said, "Oh, father, I can't tell you"; but her parents
pressed her to tell them, and at last she said, " My sister and
the snake make love always; as soon as we get to the jhum she
says to me, ' Call him to me/ and I call him, and he comes up
and coils himself up on her lap, and I am so frightened that I
cannot eat anything, and that is why I am so thin." So they
kept Chhawng-chili at home, and her father and younger sister
went to the jhum, and her father dressed himself up to resemble
Chhawng-chili, but he put his dao by his side; then the little
sister called the snake, who came up quickly and curled itself
up in her father's lap, and he with one blow cut it in two, and
then they returned to the village. On the next day Chhawng-
chili and her sister went to the jhum and her little sister called
the snake, but her father had killed it So they came back to
their house, and found their father lying on the floor just inside
the door sill Chhawng-chili said, " Get up, father, I want to
scrape the mud off my feet" (on the door sill), but her father
would not move. So Chhawng-chili scraped off the mud from
her feet, and stepped over the sill, and her father struck up and
killed her. In her stomach there were about 100 small snakes.
They killed them and killed them, but one escaped and hid
under a dry patch of mithan dung, and grew up and used to eat
people, and when it got bigger it wriggled into the "rulchawm
kua"—i.e., "feed snake hole"—and people of all villages used to