Bengal Fairy Tales/A Man who was only a Finger and a Half in Stature
XI
A MAN WHO WAS ONLY A FINGER AND A HALF IN STATURE
THERE was once a certain wood-cutter, the barrenness of whose wife was a constant source of distress to him, the more so as all the neighbours pointed at the couple as especially cursed by Heaven. The husband and wife made the richest presents and the sincerest vows to the goddess Shoshti, the giver of children; and she one day appeared before the wood-cutter in the shape of an old lady, and gave him a cucumber, saying that his wife should eat it entire, without leaving the skin even, on the seventh day from that day. The wood-cutter gave it to his wife with these instructions, but she, in her impatience, ate it up the very next day, even forgetting Shoshti's instructions as to the skin. After the usual period of conception, a male child was born; but the mother was well punished for her disobedience to the goddess. There was hardly anything natural about the child. It was born as a fully developed man, but was only a finger and a half tall, with a tuft of hair behind its head three fingers in length. He could talk and walk from his very birth; and when not even an hour old he started in search of his father, who had gone out wood-cutting.
He passed through many thoroughfares and through the forest, dispersing at one stroke of his feet the grasshoppers and other insects that waylaid him, till he reached a palace gate, where his father was toiling with great drops of perspiration on the forehead. The boy asked him to go home, 
but he said that having witnessed his child's birth and seen what had happened, he had left home in disgust, and sold himself to the king as a slave, and that therefore it was impossible for him to leave his work. At this, the son went to the king, and asked him to liberate his father. The king was annoyed at the diminutive figure before him, and said that the wood-cutter could be set free only on the payment of cowries (money) as his ransom.
Mr. "One-finger-and-half," as his name was, ran out like a ball set in motion to procure the cowries, and in the course of his journey came to a canal which to him seemed impassable. He was thinking how to cross it, when he felt someone pulling from behind at his tuft of hair. By one jerk he freed it from the stranger's grasp, and looking behind saw a frog, which, being interrogated, said that it had for its father the king of frogs, and that its name was Rung Soondar. At this the wood-cutter's son burst into a laugh of scorn, and was about to punish the young frog by dismembering it, when it said, "By certain mystical powers I know you to be a wood-cutter's son. Now it does not look well for you to be without an axe. You will get one from a blacksmith yonder, on paying a single cowrie." To which the young man answered, "O brother, I am a child, where shall I get a cowrie? For want of cowries I could not liberate my father. I have nothing in the world, and shall ever remain obliged if you can lend me something." The frog, startled at the request, said he had only a single cowrie, and that one with a hole in it. The suggestion of possessing himself of an axe was pleasing to the dwarf, and thinking little of the impediment, he directed his steps towards the blacksmith's, whom he found to be a man of the stature of two fingers and a half, and with a beard longer by half a finger. He was making an axe and a sickle, each half a finger in length. The boy, without the required cowrie, did not at first know how to proceed. But he hit off a clever plan. He approached the smith with stealthy steps, and, unperceived, tied the tuft of hair on his own head to the beard of the latter. Then he jumped on the smith's back. The latter, taken by surprise, called on his gods, wondering if he were in the clutches of a ghost or hobgoblin. His aggressor, with sides bursting with laughter, got down, and introduced himself as his best friend. But soft words were useless. The smith in a rage asked if the cowrie, the usual fee for admission into the house, had been brought, and being answered in the negative, clutched his antagonist by the throat, and was on the point of throttling him, when one of the hairs of the latter, still tied to the beard of the former, was torn. The wood-cutter's son threw himself on this account into a frenzy, and demanded of the smith the restoration of the hair, threatening him, in case of refusal, with a legal process. The smith, agitated with great terror, pleaded for mercy, which was granted on his consenting to give up the axe and the sickle when finished. A lasting friendship was then contracted between the parties, and the boy left the place. He came back to the young frog, and was asked by it to cut with his axe a young tamarind tree in the hollow of which its mate was shut up. He complied with the request; but the frog inside, having lost, through long want of exercise, the use of its legs, could not leave the hollow. Master "One-finger-and-a-half," with admirable presence of mind, put his tuft of hair into the hole and drew the frog out. Rung Soondar out of gratitude presented him with the one cowrie it possessed, which it said would suffice to liberate his father; and its mate gave him a few drops of its spittle, saying that with them he could heal the blindness of the daughter of the king whose slave his father was, and so gain her for his wife. He accordingly left the frogs, and journeyed towards the country where his father was. The cowrie the frog had given him multiplied on the way into as many cowries as would amount to a round sum of money, and he went to the king and insolently demanded of him the liberty of his father. The king, counting the cowries and satisfied with their value, promised to meet the demand, but not omitting to give the impertinent upstart a few slaps on the cheek, and a violent pull at his tuft of hair. But he was not one to be so easily disposed of. He persisted in remaining in the king's presence, and boldly asked him if he had a blind daughter, and if he would marry her to him. The king replied that for certain reasons she could not be married, save in the presence of the corpses of seven thieves separated from his kingdom by thirteen rivers. The dwarf, leaving his father behind, started for the country of the thieves, and after many adventures, reached an ant-hill near it. He could proceed no further, and tired with the long journey, and worn out with hunger and thirst, he fell asleep by the ant-hill. Midnight came, and the thieves of whom he had come in search were out on a pilfering expedition. One of them stumbled upon him, and being awakened, he asked them who they were and where they were going. They told him that they were thieves, and that their present object was to break into the house of his old friend the blacksmith. Anxious for his friend's safety, and for the furtherance of his own ends, he suggested that they would find it more profitable to present themselves before the king living across the thirteen rivers flowing by their country, who intended to give one of them his daughter as wife with a fit dowry. They yielded to the deception, and full of anticipation at the prospect before them, they followed the dwarf as their leader. The thirteen rivers were crossed; and the thieves when about to get down from the last ferry-boat stole some cowries lying hid in one corner of it. The ferry-man and the wood-cutter's son both saw the theft committed, but winked at it for the time being, though in nods and low whispers they communicated to each other their desire for revenge later on.
No sooner had the dwarf reached the palace with the thieves, than the ferry-man presented himself before the king and prosecuted them for the theft of his cowries. They were convicted of the offence, and executed. Whereupon master "One-finger-and-a-half" urged his claims to the hand of the blind princess. The king, the queen, and the princess herself were loud in their lamentations at the demand of this deformed creature; but the matter could not be helped. The king, according to the conditions he himself laid down, was bound to give away his daughter to that ugly little specimen of humanity. All he could do was to put off the wedding day.
It was within a short time after this that the friends of the seven thieves, getting intelligence of their execution, in a swarm besieged the kingdom, and plundered not only the palace, but all the other houses, reducing the king to the direst poverty imaginable. The dwarf who had enticed their friends into the kingdom and had had them executed, was the object of their keenest search, but he hid himself in a dense patch of grass, and came out only when the coast was clear. He again urged his suit for the princess's hand, and was again put off till the extermination of the race of thieves had been accomplished. For the achievement of this object the dwarf rode away, mounted on a tom-cat, into their country. On the way he made friends with hornets, wasps, and bees, with whom he began an attack which lasted continually for three days, until the thieves, smarting under the poisonous stings of the insects, left the country for good, taking with them their wives and children. Triumphantly returning to the king, he asked him for his father's release and for the hand of the princess. The king could not say "no" any longer, and the dwarf was re-named Pingal Kumara. His father was brought into the palace on a decorated chariot with flowers, and he himself was rewarded with the princess's hand, whose sight he restored with the help of the frog's spittle. The wood-cutter's wife was brought into the palace, and lived there as happily as the day was long. Years passed over their heads, until at last the king retired into the forest to prepare himself for death, leaving his dominions to his worthy son-in-law.