Chinese Fables and Folk Stories/The Eagle and the Rice Birds

THE EAGLE AND THE RICE BIRDS

物必歸原

Once a mother eagle had a nest with three eggs in it and she was very happy while waiting for her three children to come from the eggs. But one day, two schoolboys, named Jeung-Po and Hui-Yin, who knew of her nest, talked together and one of them said, "Did you know that the eagle likes the rice birds?" And the other boy replied, "No, she does not, for I have seen her drive them away."

But the one named Jeung-Po said, "Not only can I make an eagle like a rice bird, but I can make them change natures and live with each other."

"You can not do that," answered Hui-Yin.

"Will you give me a piece of silver if I can make the eagle like the rice birds and take them as friends?"

And Hui-Yin said, "Yes, I will give you a piece of silver if you do that, but I know you can not." And so they clapped hands.^[1]

So Jeung-Po went his way hunting, hunting many birds, until finally he found a rice bird's nest with five eggs in it. He took three of the eggs and put them in the mother eagle's nest and then he took the three eggs from the eagle's nest to the nest of the rice bird.

In twenty-five days the eagle's nest had three baby birds in it and Jeung-Po was glad. One day he heard the mother eagle saying to her three babies:

"I do not know why your feathers are not as mine, and your voices are so different and you are such very little things. I will go and ask my oldest son to come here to-morrow, and see if he can tell me why you are so."

On the next day the eagle's son came to visit his mother, and he said, "Ah-Ma, I am glad to see my three little brothers, but their faces are not like yours or mine."

"I know that what you say is true," said the eagle mother. "I wished you to come, so that we might talk of this strange thing. You are my child, and they are mine, but they are not like you and me."

"I will see what they eat," said the eagle son. Then he gave them a piece of meat, but they could not eat it.

"They want rice all the time," the eagle mother told him. "They will not eat meat." The mystery was so great that the eagles could not understand.

Soon the strange nestlings were flying with the eagle mother. One day she took them to a pleasant place to play, and on their way home they passed a rice bird who called to them. The mother eagle said, "Do not go with him. Come with me." But the little ones would not listen. And when the rice bird said, "Chi-Chi," and flew down to a rice field, the three little ones left the eagle mother and went with the rice bird.

The eagle mother called many times, but her strange children would not come to her. Then she said to the rice bird, "Why did my children follow your call and not mine? How did you teach them in one breath what I have not been able to teach them in all their lives?"

And the rice-bird father said, "They are not your children. They belong to the rice-bird mother. She is coming now; see for yourself."

Soon sixteen rice birds flew near and the eagle mother saw that they were all like her children. The rice bird said, "You see, it is as I told you."

"But they must be my children," said the eagle mother. "I can not understand this, for I never had children like them before. My other children were like me and they never behaved in this way. But I will take them home again and feed them, and when they grow older they may become like me and the others of my family."

"It will never be so," said the rice bird. "I am sure of that. You need not hope that these children will ever be eagles. You see they do not eat meat, they eat rice. They know the rice bird's call without being taught. They do not speak the same dialect that you speak, nor sing the same songs. They are surely rice birds and you can not keep them longer in your home."

The eagle mother tried again and again to call her children and they only said, "Chic, chic," which meant that they would not come. She waited long, but they refused to go with her. Then she chided the rice birds and said, "You are a bad company, and you have tempted my children to join you. Why do you not tell them to come home with me, their mother? If you do not cease your evil actions, I shall eat you or drive you away."

The eagle mother flew away alone to the mountain, and she sat on a great rock and waited long for her children to come home.

The night came, but her little ones did not return. In her heart the eagle mother knew they were lost to her. All the dark night she cried aloud in her grief. In the morning she hunted long, but she could not find them. She said to herself:

"This is a strange and dreadful thing that has come to me. I remember that I once heard a quarrel-bird say that some of her children had left her in this same way, and she believed some bad boy had changed her eggs. For she had six yellow children in her nest, and when they could fly they went away with the yellow song birds. She found her own children one day in a camphor tree. I wish that I might find my own children."

Just then she met the quarrel-bird mother, and she asked her, "How did you find your own children?"

And the quarrel-bird mother said, "I was passing by the camphor tree when I saw the little ones alone, and I asked, 'What are you doing here?' And they said, 'Eating nuts!'

"'Do you hke nuts?' I asked.

"'Oh yes, very well.'

"'Where did you come from?' I said.

"'We came from the yellow-bird family.'

"'But you do not look like the yellow birds.'

"'No, and we did not talk nor eat as they did.'

"'Where is your home now?'

"'We have no home.'

"'Why do you not live with the yellow-bird mother?'

"'We were not happy there. The others do not eat nor drink, nor sing as we do. We are not fond of them, nor they of us.'

"'You are like me and mine,' I told them. And we looked at each other and saw the same feathers and the same color. Then they asked me where my home was and I told them under a rock of the Wu-Toa Mountain. So they went with me, and my house and my food were pleasant to them. In some way—though we could not tell how—we knew in our hearts that we belonged to each other. And we were happy, happy."

The eagle mother thought long about the story of the quarrel-bird, and the next morning she left her nest early and went to the wilderness to seek her lost children. On the way, she met a cousin eagle who asked her, "Why are you crying and crying?"

The eagle mother answered and said, "I have lost three children. Have you seen any—lost in the wilderness? I could not sleep all last night, for a great trouble has come to me."

The eagle cousin said, "I saw three eagle children pass here. They went to the Fah-Nim tree and ate of its fruit. They were playing there, and seemed to be happy."

The eagle mother went to the Fah-Nim tree and saw three little eagles; and she said, "Children, how did you come here?"

The little eagles answered her, "We are not your children. Why do you call us? We have had no mother since we were born. The rice bird left us when we were small. She said we were not her children. Then an eagle came along and gave us food until we could fly."

The eagle mother said, "You look like my older children, and I believe you are mine. Would you like to go with me and see our home?"

Then the little eagles talked together and said, "She is very kind to us. Of course we do not know her, but we might go and see her home."

So they went, and in that eagle mother's house, they soon knew her for their mother and she knew her own children.

And Jeung-Po lost the money, for it was proved that he could not change nature. Each bird went back to its own kind. The eagle is always an eagle, and the rice bird is always a rice bird.

Ee-Sze(Meaning): The good can not stay with the evil; light can not be changed into darkness, nor darkness into light. White is always white and black is always black. The rice bird is always a rice bird and the eagle is always an eagle. Each is according to his own nature and kind. Man need not try to change those things which the Creator made changeless.

1. This is similar to the Occidental custom of shaking hands on an agreement.