Long ago, in a small village, an old woman lived with her daughter. The old woman worked hard all the time, while the girl was very lazy and extremely selfish. They had a bull, and the old woman always told her daughter: “You must take good care of the bull.”
The girl always mocked her old mother’s words and told her: “The bull is an animal, an animal that must serve us and we benefit from it, not us serving it.” There was a pond at a distance from the old woman’s house. Every day at noon, the old woman would take the bull to this pond and give him a drink herself, making him drink from the pond. Meanwhile, the lazy girl would only eat and sleep.
One day, the old woman became ill and asked her daughter to take the bull to the pond. The old woman told her daughter that the weather was extremely hot and that the bull was certainly suffering from severe thirst. The old woman tried to tempt the girl to go to the lake with the bull by telling her: “I have some candy. You can go with the bull to the lake to drink, and while you’re there, eat this candy.” The girl agreed and took the candy from her mother, but the girl wanted more and was very greedy.
The girl wanted to deceive her mother. After she went away from the house and disappeared from her mother’s sight, she tied the bull to a tree and sat beside him to eat the candy. The thirsty bull waited for the girl to finish eating the candy. The bull wished she would finish the candy quickly.
The bull wished the girl would finish the candy quickly so she could take him to the lake, as he was suffering from severe thirst. After the girl finished eating all the candy, she returned to the house and lied to her mother, telling her that she had gone with the bull to drink from the pond.
The bull was extremely angry and cast a curse on the girl that she would turn into a bird that would only drink when it rained, and that she would feel the thirst he had felt throughout her life. The angry bull’s curse was fulfilled. Indeed, on the girl’s birthday, she turned into a bird that would only drink when the sky rained. She would wait for the winter season and the falling of rain to drink. She would remain thirsty throughout the year and not drink despite water being available around her.
The Lesson of the Story:
Lying is not beneficial, and may put us in many major problems that could affect us throughout our lives.
The story is translated from: The Curse of The Bullock