Reading Notes: More of Babbitt's Jataka Tales Part A

• The Golden Goose
• Once upon a time...there was a goose with beautiful golden feathers
• Nearby lived a very poor woman and her two daughters
• The Goose noticed that they had a hard time and decided to give them one after another of his feathers, so the mother could sell them and the money could bring the small family comfort
• When he shows up the woman says "We have nothing to give you" but the goose replied he had something to give them 
• He gave them his feathers, one by one, flying away for periods but always coming back and leaving another feather
• One day the mother got greedy, and said "let's not trust the Goose, because he may someday fly away and never come back, then we'll be poor again. Let's get all his feathers when he comes back."
• The daughters didn't want to, but the mother did so anyway
• She grabbed the Golden Goose and pulled out every one of his feathers
• Funny magical coincidence: If the Goose's feathers are plucked against his will, they turn white and are valueless as chicken feathers, and the new ones that come in are not golden, but still white
• So his feathers grew back (white) and he flew home and never came back
• And presumably the mother was made poor because of her greed
• The Cunning Wolf
• Once upon a time...the people in a "certain" town went out into the woods for a holiday
• They took baskets full of food, but when lunchtime rolled around they ate all their meat and didn't have any left for supper
• A man says he will go get some fresh meat, and they'll make a fire and roast it
• So he takes a club down to the lake where the animals come to drink, and he lay down, club in hand, playing dead.
• The animals came down to the lake to drink, but they see the man lying there and watched him for a while
• The King of the Wolves decided the man was playing a trick on them, and he told the rest of the animals to stay put while he saw if the man was really dead, or pretending to be dead
• The Cunning King of the Wolves crept up to the man and pulled at his club - and the man pulled back on his club!
• The King of the Wolves ran off saying, "If you had been dead, you would not have pulled back on your club when I tried to pull it away. I see your trick. You pretend you are dead so that you may kill one of us for your supper."
• The man jumped up and threw his club at the KoW but missed; he looks around for other animals but there was no one in sight (as they had all run away)
• The man goes back to his friends (lightly ashamed) and says "I tried to get fresh meat by playing a trick on the animals, but the cunning Wolf played a better trick on me, and I could not get one of them."
• Bibliography: More Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt (link)

A Cunning Wolf (Rudraksha Chodankar, link)