Reading Notes: Laos Unit, Part B

Wat Mai, Laos

(Photo by Wikimedia Commons) 

Part B of the Laos unit contains similar stories. Most stories are how things came to be, like why rice is so small and if it’s not about how things came to be it’s about karma or what happens to people that are ungrateful.

Other stories of of greed as well. These stories not only contain lessons about being grateful but they also connect why things are the way they are through these greedy intentions. “The Boys Who Were Not Appreciated” show a different side as well. This was a story about brothers whose parents took them for granted and starved them. The boys left to be on their own and saved the chow’s daughter. In return the boys were able to feed their friends and relatives. The children even gave a gift to their parents who never appreciated them. The parents at first refused to cut their bamboo but a woman convinced them and discovered there was gold in them. By the time they wanted to thank their sons, it was too late, they traveled too far away. This story is about a child’s unconditional love for a parent and teaches one how to be kind to people in the worst of circumstances.

The Fortunes of Ai Powlo is about a sociopath who tricks people and flees for his own pleasure. He convinces people rub peppers on their heads until they bleed. He even convinced his father that his mother died and his mother that his father died. He tricked them and then reunited them with each other and told them that they were other people. He, however, became the joke when he drowned trying to flee from another prank. His skull was found, smashed, and turned into dice by a boatman.

The Blindman was about a man who married a woman but she did not know he was blind. She noticed that he acted strangely. For example, the house caught on fire and he had to feel around for the door. After they escaped he fell into a well and she put a ladder down there for him to get out. He climbed way too high he ended up high above the ground and she called to him to come down and he said he was looking at the fire. Her father tricked the blind man but who ended up getting snake venom in his eyes and he gained his sight. He ran home to his wife who cried about how much she loved him anyways but was even happier to realize that he could see.

These tales do more explaining than they do teach lessons. There are lessons but the focus is more so on how things came to be and why. The lessons seem secondary. Some tales don’t have lessons at all just stories on what people, creatures, gods, or the dead did to make things how they are now. There are some things in the wold that cannot be explained and even though these are just folktales it’s interesting how people came up with these tales and conclusions.

Bibliography. "Laos Folk-lore." Katherine Neville Fleeson. Source.