The Tree Spirit’s Love: Folktale from India

The Tree Spirit’s Love: Folktale from India

A very long time ago, in a village in Nagaland, there lived a very beautiful girl, the only child of her parents who were very rich. As was the custom among the Ao-Naga tribe, when a girl reached puberty, she went to the girls’ dormitory to spend the nights. It was in these dormitories that young men would come after night fall to court young ladies and in this way many young people would choose their life partners.

This young and beautiful girl was also courted by many eligible young men of the village. But her eyes were fixed on a particular young man who was very handsome. As time passed, their friendship grew more and more intimate and he visited her every night and left before dawn. But during the day he was nowhere to be seen and all her efforts to locate him in the village were in vain.

So in desperation she confided in her parents who thought deeply over the matter. The young man in the meantime continued to visit the girl as usual. One dawn, as advised by her father, when the boy was preparing to leave the girl, she tied a new waist-band with a dao, round his waist with which he departed. In the morning, the family was very astonished to see the dao-belt tied round a tree which stood below their house on the bank of a pond. This meant only one thing to them, that the young man was not a human being at all but was the spirit of that tree which had fallen in love with this beautiful girl.

However, they wanted to be absolutely sure about it. And when in the following night, the young man came to the girl as usual and was preparing to leave her at dawn, she wrapped a new indigo-dyed shawl round his shoulders, with which he departed.

In the morning, the shawl was found hanging from the fork of the same tree, which confirmed the suspicion that he was the tree-spirit.

As the girl pondered over this, she recalled that during their initial courtship, whenever she went to the pond to fetch water, or wash herself, the branches of the particular tree would sway, whether it was windy or not. She then realised that even while in the form a tree the young ‘man’ was courting her, in the daytime too!

The girl’s father, in the meantime, decided to see for himself this phenomenon before he could do anything about it. So one night he kept vigil outside the girl’s dormitory, and when the young ‘man’ left her at dawn the father followed him secretly to see where he went. Not heading for the men’s dormitory as other young men were doing, he went straight to the bank of the stream and stood there. And right in front of the father’s astonished eyes; he was gradually transformed into the tree which people were always used to seeing. His body turned into the trunk, his arms into branches and his hair into leaves and gradually, instead of the youth, there stood this majestic tree, gently swaying in the early morning breeze.

The father then resolved to cut down and destroy this mysterious tree. He went to the villagers and told them of the real nature of the tree and enlisted their help in getting rid of it. As the villagers prepared to cut down the tree, the father locked his daughter in her room with strict orders not to try to come out.

The villagers then proceeded to chip away at the tree with their sharp daos. But the tree simply refused to yield to their attack. Hour after hour, they hacked at it, but it stood there as firmly as ever. In the meantime the girl was trying to see what was happening outside and strained to look out through a chink in the bamboo wall of her room. Just as she was able to widen the gap in the wall and peep out, a sharp splinter of the tree trunk which was being chipped away by the villagers flew towards the house and, entering through the narrow chink, pierced the girl’s eye. The splinter entered the eye with such a great force that it lodged in her brain through the eye killing her instantly.

At the precise moment when the girl fell dead, the tree also swayed for a moment and fell to the ground with a mighty crash. The villagers were jubilant and the father the most of all, because he thought that now his beautiful daughter would no longer be haunted by the tree-spirit.

But when he came home to greet his daughter with this news, to his utter grief and shock, he found that the girl was dead with the splinter stuck in her eye. Thus he realised that the tree-spirit, had won after all, and claimed his lover even in death.

The two lovers were thus united in death.