by Katherine Neville Fleeson · 1899
Fantasy · Classics
Folk tales of the Laos people, told aloud around fires and written down for the first time by a missionary who lived among them in the late 1800s.
Content note: The collector was a nineteenth-century Christian missionary, and her introduction reflects the attitudes of her time.
14
Types of the Laos People
15
A Child of The Woods
Deep in the forest of the North there is a large village of jungle people, and, among them is one old woman, who is held in reverence by all. The stranger who asks why she is honored as a princess is thus answered by her:
“Verily, I have much boon,1 for I am but a child of nature. When I was a young maiden, it fell upon a day that my heart grew hot with anger. For many days the anger grew until it filled my whole heart, also were my eyes so red that I could see but dimly, and no longer could I live in the village or among my own people, for I hated all men and I felt that the beasts of the forest were more to me than my kindred. Therefore, I fled from the face of man into the jungle where no human foot had ever gone. All day I journeyed, running as though my feet would never weary and feeling no pangs of hunger. When the darkness closed about me, I was not afraid, but lay down under the shelter of a tree, and, for a time, slept peacefully, as peacefully as though in my own home.
