Minah and the fox
Cik Othman lived with his
wife and six daughters in a small villageon Pulau. Pinang. All his six daughters
were pretty. But althoughmany men wanted to marry the girls they
did not find anyone they liked. As time went by
and they became older, Cik Othman and his wife worried that their
daughters would never many.
One day, Cik Othman and his wife were
surprised to see a fox
approaching their house.
"What do you want,
Mr. Fox?" they asked.
"I want to marry one of your
daughters."
"Ha, ha, ha! Who has ever heard of a fox
marrying a girl?"
"Well, why don't you
ask whether any of your daughters would like to marry me? I may
not be a man but I'm kind and honest."'
The eldest daughter refused.
"What, marry a fox! Oh, no, no!" she cried.
All the other girls
refused except
the youngest daughter, who was called Minah. She was the most beautiful of all.
"I don't think Mr.
Fox is so bad," she said. "At least, he's kind and honest which
is better than a lot of men."
There was a great shout of laughter from her
sisters.
After she married
Mr. Fox, all her family, friends and neighboursteased
her about her husband. But they lived very happily together.
Minah never knew what her husband did for a
living. He use(] to leave the
house at dawn arid return late at night. One day,
she decided to follow him. He went to the beach. She could hardly believe her eyes. Her husband took off his
fur and changed into a
handsome young man. He stepped into a boat and rowed out to sea.
As soon as her husband was
out of sight, she came out from behind the thick bushes where she had been hiding and took away his fur. That evening, when
her husband returned, he could not find his fur. Minah jumped out of her hiding place. "Don't change back into afox,', she cried. "You
look so much better
as you are."
"Are you ashamed of me then?" he
asked.
"No," she answered, "but it
would be nice for everyone to know
that you're really a man."
As soon as her sisters
knew that her husband had changed into a man, they became jealous.
But Minah did not take any notice
of them.
Then her husband told her that he had to go
away on business. "Ishall be away for several months," he said, "but when I return I shall be a rich man."
Minah was very obedient. Although
she was not happy, She allowed her husband to go.
Her sisters were very
pleased. "Your husband has left you," they told her.
"He'll never come back. Perhaps he has changed into a fox again."
However, one day the villagers came running to her house to
tell her that her husband was returning. He was leading back
a fleet of ships full of
treasure—silk, golden plates, jade and precious stones.
Minah dressed herself in her best clothes and went to the beach to wait for her husband. Her
sisters went with her.
Suddenly, her sisters
seized her,
and bound and gagged her so tightly that
she could not move. They put her in a boat and
pushed it out to sea.
Her husband's fleet
approached. The first ship passed without seeing her. Ship after ship passed in this way.
The last ship was her husband's ship, decorated with brightly-coloured flags.
"Stop," her
husband ordered. "What is that boat over there?"
When the boat came alongside, he recognized his wife lying at
the bottom of the boat.
"Minah, what has happened?" he
called out.
He jumped down into the boat and set her free.
He carried her back to his ship. When she felt a little better, she told her
husband everything that had happened.
"Really your sisters are very
wicked," her husband said. "We must teach them a good lesson."
He told her to stay in his cabin.
When he landed, Minah's five sisters were
waiting for him, dressed in their best clothes. "Where's my wife?" he
asked.
"We don't
know," they said. "We saw her go to the beach but we didn't see her again after
that."
They gave a big dinner for
him which was attended by many rich and important people. As they served him with
the best food and wine, he told them of his adventures, and how he had captured
a pirate ship full of treasure.
"As I was approaching the harbour,"
he said, "I saw a small boat floating in the water. There was a young
woman in it who had been tied up by robbers and left to die."
He clapped his hands, and some of his men
brought in his wife. Minch was dressed in shining
silk with sparkling jewels in her hair. Her sisters almost fainted.
"I'm not going to hand you over to the
police," Minah's husband told them. "But I want you to leave this
village and never return again. I hope this will be a good lesson to you for the rest
of your lives."
No one knows where the sisters went but Minch
and her husband lived happily ever after.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar