Simia
The Monkey
A group of travelling merchants stop for the night, and a lion sneaks in amongst the livestock, waiting to pounce. However, before the lion can do anything, a thief also breaks into the paddock, feels the lion's huge hindquarters, and mistakes it for a particularly fat bull, and jumps on its back. The lion, terrified, begins to run - and the thief, realising his mistake, is also frightened, but too afraid of what might happen if he lets go. When they pass under a tree, the thief grabs a low hanging branch, and swings off the lion's back. The lion continues to run until it meets a monkey, who asks what has happened; when the monkey heard that the man had escaped into a tree, it offers to help, so the two creatures return to where the thief had hidden himself. The monkey climbs up into the tree where the man was hiding, but the man grabs the monkey's testicles and squeezes and twists them so painfully that hte monkey shrieks and falls senseless from the tree.
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Nishimura offers the following motifs, analogues, and reference stories: Motifs and Types: TMI J1758.5.1 Thief thinks lion is horse, rides him. J1769.3 Fool lays his hand on demon in the dark, believing it is a ram he has come to steel. N691.1 Numskull’s outcry overawes tiger who is carrying him on his back. ATU 177 The thief and the tiger. ATU 1149 Bluff: Children desire Tiger’s flesh. Analogues: Panchatantra, Textus simplicior, 5.11 ‘The Cowardly Rakshasa’, Textus ornatior (Purṇabhadra), 5.9 ‘The credulous Ogre’; Pantschâkhyâna-Wârttika, 2 ‘Schakal, Tiger und Affe’; Folklore ordos, No. 53 ‘Guo lü (The Pot Leaks)’; Chinese Folktales, 4 ‘Scared of Leaking’; Eberhard, Typen chinesischer Volksmärchen, 10 ‘Die Angst vor der Traufe’; Choi In Hak, A Study on Korean Folktales…, 50 ‘Tora yori kowai Kushigaki’; Korean Folktales, p. 33, ‘The Identity of Kokam’; Yim Dong Gon, Korean Folktales, 65 ‘Tiger and Dried Persimmon’;Nihon Mukashibanashi Tsukan, 28, ‘Type Index’ 583 ‘Furuya no Mori (Leak in the old house)’. Reference stories, etc.: Aesop’s Fables, 146 ‘The Lion startled by a Mouse’; Babrius, Aesopic Fables, 82 ‘Good Reason to be alarmed’; ‘The King of the Goats’ in Chinese Folktales, 28; Eberhard, Typen chinesischer Volksmärchen, 3 ‘Der Tiger und der Hirsch’; ‘The Brave Little Goat’ in Siberian Folktales, pp. 238-243; Seventy Tales of a Parrot, Textus ornatior 52-54, Textus simplicior 42-44; Nakhshabi, Tales of a Parrot, 29 ‘The Story of the Lion, the Lynx, the Monkey, the Use of the Lion’s Den…’; Qadiri, The Tooti Nameh, 14 ‘A Lion who a Syagosh dispossessed of his Dwelling’; Straparola, Le piacevoli Notti, 10.2. Bibliography: Chauvin VIII 32. Landau 16. ‘Ko-Ro (Tiger and Wolf) Furuya no Mori’ in ‘Ass’s Ear’ in Takagi Toshio, Studies in the Japanese Legends of Mythology. Takagi Toshio, A Study of Fairy Tales, pp. 183-185. Nihon Mukashibanashi Tsukan, ‘Kenkyu-hen 2’, 583. |
| Critical Literature |
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| Nishimura (2001), Clouston (1884) |
| Simia appears in the following versions and secondary versions |
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| Simia is narrated in the following occurrences |
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| Simia appears in the following manuscripts |
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