The Boy Who Became a Stone

One day a little boy named Elonen sat out in the yard making a bird snare, and as he worked, a little bird called to him:

“Tik-tik-lo-den” (come and catch me).

“I am making a snare for you,” said the boy; but the bird continued to call until the snare was finished.

Then Elonen ran and threw the snare over the bird and caught it, and he put it other boys to swim.

While he was away, his grandmother grew hungry, so she ate the bird, and when Elonen returned and found that his bird was gone, he was so sad that he wished he might go away and never come back.

He went out into the forest and walked a long distance, until finally he came to a big stone and said:

“Stone, open your mouth and eat me.” And the stone opened its mouth and boy.

When his grandmother missed the boy, she went out and looked everywhere, hoping to find him. Finally she passed near the stone and it cried out:

“Here he is.”

Then the old woman tried to open the stone but she could not, so she called the horses to come and help her. They came and kicked it, but it would not break.

Then she called the carabao and they hooked it, but they only broke their horns. She called the chickens, which pecked it, and the thunder, which shook it, but nothing could open it, and she had to go home without the boy.

 The Man with the Coconuts

A Tinguian Folktale

One day a man who had been to gather his coconuts loaded his horse heavily with the fruit. On the way home he met a boy whom he asked how long it would take to reach the house.

“If you go slowly,” said the boy, looking at the load on the horse, “you will arrive very soon; but if you go fast, it will take you all day.”

The man could not believe this strange speech, so he hurried his horse. But the coconuts fell off and he had to stop to pick them up. Then he hurried his horse all the more to make up for lost time, but the again. Many time he did this, and it was night when he reached home.