Storytelling Week 4

The Mouse, The Wiseman, and The Well

 

The Mouse

 

 

Let me tell you a story……..

I was a mouse…no really I was……I used to run around and play all day long and have no worries. One day I met a wise man, and at first I was scared of him, but after awhile I realized this wise man was someone that could be a friend. In those days life was much simpler. I would run around and eat the leftover scraps that he would drop. I guess he was bored because one day he gave me the power to speak. We used to sit up at night and talk to each other all the time.

One day he asked me what I wanted, so I thought about it. I am not afraid of much because I am small and most times other animals don’t even notice me at all. Still there are times when I go to the river that I am harassed by these cats. Bunch of bullies. So I asked the wise man to make me into a cat so I could teach these cats a lesson. This is where my trouble started.

See after I became a cat I was not satisfied. I wanted to be bigger and stronger. So the wise man made me a dog, an ape, a boar, and finally a elephant. See, I thought being an elephant would be great because I was huge and powerful and no one could mess with me. But then I saw something else I wanted.

I saw a king and his queen. We became friends me and the king. One day he tried to put his wife on my back, can you believe that, a animal as great as I having to haul around some queen…..Well that didn’t work out for her because I threw her off my back and ran away. Still, I did envy her because the king picked her up and treated her with care. How awesome would it be for someone to treat me like that, I wanted to be a queen, so I asked the wise man to make me a queen. He told me he couldn’t, but that he could make me a beautiful woman.

Being a woman was great. I spent most of my days hanging out with the wise man. We were best of friends.

One day the wise man went fishing and who should show up at my door step but he king. He couldn’t resist me. I even got him to throw out that raggedy old queen that he tried to throw on my back. We were married and I finally had what I wanted. I was happy.

Soooooooooo…..One day I was by this well and I was thinking about how good I had it, and I began to jump up and down with glee, and well I fell into the well and died. I was always a clumbsy person, falling all the time, I should have asked for the wise man to give me great balance, but well I guess hindsight is 20/20.

Anyways, the king took back the old queen and left me in the well. They covered me with dirt and now I am a poppy tree. I guess it is an ok life, except I have all these darn mice, cats, dogs, apes, and people climbing on me…….

Author’s Notes
This is from the Tales of Bengal unit. It is the story of the origin of opium. The story was much longer than most of the other origin stories I read so I wanted to shorten it and make it a quick tale of how opium was created.

 

Bibliography

The origin of Opium from the Tales of Bengal unit link http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/07/myth-folklore-unit-folktales-of-bengal.html

 

Picture Attribution

Rasbak [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons