SHAN FOLK LORE STORIES

FROM THE

HILL AND WATER COUNTRY

BY
WILLIAM C. GRIGGS, M. D.

INTRODUCTION

The following stories have been taken from the great[v]mass of unwritten lore that is to the black-eyed, brown-skinnedboys and girls of the Shan mountain countryof Burma what "Jack the Giant Killer" and "Cinderella"are to our own children.

The old saw as to the songs and laws of a countrymay or may not be true. I feel confident, however,that stories such as these, being as they are purelynative, with as little admixture of Western ideas as it waspossible to give them in dressing them in their garmentof English words, will give a better insight into whatthe native of Burma really is, his modes of thoughtand ways of looking at and measuring things, than atreatise thrice as long and representing infinitely moreliterary merit than will be found in these little tales;and at the same time I hope they will be found to theaverage reader, at least, more interesting.

It may, perhaps, be not out of place to say a littleof the "hpeas" who appear so frequently in thesestories. The hpea is the Burman nat, and is "a beingsuperior to men and inferior to Brahmas, and havingits dwelling in one of the six celestial regions" (DoctorCushing's "Shan-English Dictionary"). They areuniversally worshiped by the inhabitants of Burma.[vi]If a man has fever, the best thing to do is to "linghpea," that is, to feed the spirits, and the sufferertherefore offers rice, betel-nut, painted sticks, etc.Some kinds of hpeas live in the sacred banyan trees,and frequently have I seen men, after a long day'smarch in the jungle, sit shivering on the ground whenwithin an arm's length lay good dry fire-wood. It hadfallen, however, from a tree in which lived a hpea, andnot a man would dare touch it. Big combs of honeymay be in the nests of the wild bees, but it is safe fromthe hungry traveler if it is sheltered by such a tree.Some watch over wells, tanks, and lakes, and it isnotorious throughout the Southern Shan States, that apromising young American missionary, who wasdrowned while shooting, met his death by being draggedto the bottom of the lake by the guardian spirit, whohad become incensed at him for killing a water-fowl onhis domains.

In Shan folk-lore the hero does not "marry and livehappy ever after," but he becomes the king of thecountry.

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