Image Information - African Leopard in Serengeti, Tanzania from Wikipedia page
The story I liked best this time was actually the first story I read from the Santal Folktales page, called Ledha and the Leopard. I liked this story because it had several twists that were entirely unexpected but that weren't too far-fetched (most of the time) to be believable. I do wonder, however, what the moral of the story is because I thought folktales were meant to impart some lesson or other, but perhaps I'm mistaken and not all tales that are told are for learning, maybe some are just for entertainment.
So in this story it starts off with some pretty foolish young boys who like to call out to a leopard that lives in the forest above them, not expecting that he would ever show up. One day, however, he does come running for them because he has a lizard on his bum and can't get rid of it (he had been playing hide and seek with the lizard and accidentally sat on it, then got bitten by it and it wouldn't let him go). Ledha couldn't run fast enough to get away so the leopard caught up with him and promised not to eat him if he'd just take the lizard off and never tell anyone that a lizard had been able to bite him and scare him so badly. If he did tell, though, he would be hunted down and eaten. So the leopard apparently went on his way (though in reality he followed Ledha to make sure he didn't tell anyone). Ledha refused to tell his friends what had happened, but that night did eventually give in to his sister's wheedling and told her. The leopard heard him tell and that night snuck in and stole him and his whole bed away and carried it deep into the forest. Ledha woke up during the journey and realized what was happening so he caught ahold of a tree branch and escaped. The leopard, after finding him gone, retraced his path through the forest until he found Ledha in the tree. He promised not to eat him when he came down, so Ledha did, but the leopard was going to break his promise. Ledha asked if he could have just one pinch of tobacco first and the leopard agreed. When he heard the tobacco (which was apparently very dry and noisy) rustling around in the bag he asked what was really in there and Ledha told him it was the lizard from earlier. This scared the leopard away and Ledha escaped, though he didn't know how to get out of the forest so he made a home for himself near some wild buffaloes. He cleaned up after the buffaloes every morning when they moved away to graze and they were eventually curious as to how their home was getting clean so they left one of their kindred behind one day to see. She found out it was Ledha and told her friends it was a kind man who had come to take care of them. They made a bargain with Ledha, if he would take care of them and help them wash, they would give him the milk of whichever of the cows was his favorite and tastiest. One day, as he was washing in the river (and this was the most hard to believe part in the story because what on earth would have prompted him to wrap his hair up and why would she have cared about the hair of someone and then married that lame long-haired nobody who lived in the forest??) some of his hair fell out and he wrapped it in some leaves and let it float down the river. A princess found it and declared that she would not go on living without finding the man that the hair belonged to so her father sent a crow to find him and the crow lured him out by stealing his flute and making him chase it all the way back to the palace. She married him and they lived there for a while but the buffaloes were suffering without him so he moved her and him back to the forest and built a palace there and a highway so that he could travel back and forth between his forest home where he cared for the buffaloes and her home in the city.
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