The lessons that this story teaches are: As surely as the wheels of the cart follow the oxen, so surely will wickedness be punished. If you sin you must suffer. The man who kills another will assuredly meet the same fate.
[3] The Shans call the two front feet of a quadruped "hands." The digits are called "fingers" not "toes."
[5] The Shans do not usually say that a king "rules" over a country, but the expression generally used is that he "eats" it; a very suggestive and alas! too often only too true expression.
Many, many years ago, at the beginning of the world, a little sparrow built her nest on the top of a tall tree that grew near the edge of a lake. In it she laid five little eggs, and never was mother bird prouder than she, and all day long she flew from tree to tree chirping out her joy. So proud in fact was she, and so much noise did she make, that a monkey that lived on the other side of the lake was struck with the remembrance of how he had once dined with great satisfaction on eggs laid by the sparrow's sister, and in a few minutes he was on his way to repeat the performance.
In vain the little bird cried and begged him to spare her brood, promising to show him where the sweetest plantains in all the country were growing; the monkey only laughed at her and climbed the tree to get the prize.
The next moment the robber would have gotten his spoil, and this wonderful story would never have been told, but just then the great lord Sa Kyah looked earthward and saw the tragedy that was taking place.
Like a drop of rain that falls from a tree when the wind blows after a shower, the mighty lord descended, and when the would-be robber reached the nest his hand entered an empty one.
[Illustration: "On his way he saw what seemed to be a bed of flowers." Page 79.]
The eggs were soon brought back from the _hpea_ country where the lord Sa Kyah had taken them for safety, and in due time were hatched. Out of the first protruded a sharp bill, and a kingfisher, bright of plumage and swift of wing, broke out of its speckled prison. The next egg broke and a buffalo came out, to be followed by a lordly striped tiger from the next. A terrible _hpea-loo_, with head and claws like a bird and body like a man, tore his way out of the next one, already looking around for a man whom he might devour for his first meal.