Triditional Folk lore

A response to the turtle and the shark a Samoan legend.

This is a Karen’s Legend about why the elephants are so smart.

There was a village in the jungle of the land of Karen where the people live peacefully and happily with each other. Their life consist of planting rice, harvesting rice, catching fish and so on. Everyday the villagers would go down to the river to catch fishes for food. They would weave baskets made out of flax to hold the the fishes and fruit or vegetable that they manage to find on the way to the river and back. Someday day the villagers would have success in catching fishes and someday they won’t.

But inside a village there lived a woman who would go the river after the villagers left to do her own fishing. She would go down to the river after everyone left and she would fish. Before fishing she would sing a song.

Ta anaw si su, Ta anaw law se.

After singing that line her nose would become long and she would splash water and fish using her trunk. Using this trick she would get a basket full of fishes everyday. After fishing she would sing a song

Ta anaw si su, Ta anaw gey taw

With this song her trunk would shorten and return back to normal. She would do this everyday and she would come back to the village with a full basket.

One day the villagers notice that every time she went to fish she would come back with basket full of fishes.They talk among themselves.

“How did she catch so many fishes”

“Yea, even we don’t catch fishes everyday like her”

“ So what should we do?” One villager asked

“We should follow her and see what her tricks are”

With that decision made the next day they villagers follow the women without her noticing it and as usual she would sing the song

Ta anaw si su, Ta anaw law se   and her nose will elongated and them after fishing she would sing, Ta anaw si su, Ta anaw gey taw and her nose would shorten and return back to normal.

The villagers saw her tricks and decided among them self that they should do something about this. So the next day they follow her down to the river and after she finished singing the song that would turn her nose into a trunk they jump out of hiding and cut off her trunk.

The women was so shocked she ran off into the jungle to hide away from them. Because her nose was cut off she couldn't turn it back to normal and and she was embarrassed to go back to the village with her nose hanging down.  So she stay in the jungle and as she stay in the jungle her feet got wider and insect bites her ears so it got so swollen and they never return back to normal. Her foots turn into elephant feet, her ears became big like an elephant ears and her trunk turn into an elephant trunk. So she herself turn into an elephant. Therefore because the elephant were once a human that why they are so intelligent.