Today I'm going to write about my favorite of the first half of the Khasi Folktales, The Stag and the Snail. I liked this particular reading because it reminded me of the story of the hair and the turtle in our own folktales. In this folktale, the stag is bragging to the snail that he is much faster and the snail points out that that may be true but at least she isn't all sweaty. Well the snail ends up challenging the stag to a long race to prove herself to the other animals and they set it for the next day. Her family decides to help her win the race when she goes home that night and tells them all about it, so they all split up and go to different parts of the trail and hide. The next day the snail takes off her shell and they start the race, her moving at a slow and steady speed and him moving very quickly. After a time, he stops and looks back but can't see her because of the grass and her being so tiny, but he's sure she hasn't caught up to him, so he calls back to her but heard a voice from right under him cry out "I am here, I am here!" He was so shocked that she had caught up that he takes off running even faster this time, and the next time he stops it happens again. This continued on and by the end of the race the stag was all out of energy from running so fast that he had to stop and rest, and the snail won! The stag was so upset by this that he coughed up his gallbladder and to this day he doesn't have a gallbladder in reminder of the shame of losing to a snail.
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