376 FOLK-TALES OF INDIA.
a pond, where fishermen were wont to go and catch fish. The hook got fixed in a stump hidden under the water. The fishei-man, unable to drag it out, thought to himself, " There will be a big fish at the end of this hook; I'll send my little boy home with a message to his mother, and bid her pick a quarrel with her neighbours, so after that they will not expect a share of what I may have taken." He said to his son, " Go, my dear, and inform your mother that we have caught a tremendous big fish, and tell her to pick a quarrel with her neigh- bours." After he had sent off the child he was unable to get his hook out of the stump ; for fear of breaking the lines he placed his upper garment upon the ground and went down into the water, and in searching for fish, through greed of fish, he struck himself against the snags and injured both his eyes.
To make matters worse a thief even carried off the garment be had placed on the ground. Suffering great pain and ])ressing his eyes with his hands he came trembling out of the water and began to look about for his cloak.
His wife, moreover, stirred up a quarrel, thinking to herself, *' I'll manage so as no one will expect anything." So one ear she adorned with a palm-leaf and one eye she smeared with soot off the cooking- pot, and with a dog in her bosom she proceeded to the houses of her neighbours. Then a certain friend said to her, ** In one ear you have actually got a palm-leaf as an ornament, one eye is smeared, and you are going about from house to house with a dog in your bosom as if it were a pet child. Why surely you have gone out of your senses."
- ' I have not gone out of my senses, but you abuse and revile me
without any reason. I'll go at once to the village headman and have you fined eight kahdpanas.^' Having thus stirred up stnfo, both went before the village headman. When he had investigated the quarrel, punishment fell even upon the head of her who had commenced the disturbance. " Give her the stick," was the sentence, so they bound her and began to beat her.
A tree-sprite, who had witnessed this woman's conduct in the village and the injury to the husband in the forest, standing within the branches of a tree, said, <* man, your work both in the water and
