[446] Redface believed all this, and longed to have all this fruit to eat. So he went off, and hunted here, and hunted there, but no fruit could he find. Then he came back again; and there was Blackface sitting inside his cave! He determined to outwit him; so stopping in front he repeated the second stanza:

"Happy he who honour pays
To his elders full of days;
Just as happy I feel now
After all that fruit, I vow!"

The big monkey listened, and repeated the third:

"When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war;
A monkey scents a monkey's tricks afar.
Even a young one were too sharp by half;
But old birds never can be caught with chaff."

The other made off.

_____________________________

When the Master ended this discourse, he summed up the birth-tale: "At that time the owner of the hut was the little monkey, the interloper was the big black monkey, but the Tree-spirit was I myself."

Footnotes

^303:1 Folk-Lore Journal, 3. 255.

^303:2 Reading agantva (which is surely right).

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