Kaw Kle Klaw Noh ( The Beast Wedding)
In the past, there were two sisters. Together, they went to clear weeds in their rotational field every day. One day, being tired from weeding, one of the sisters jokingly said, “If there is even one young man who would come and help weed, I would follow him anywhere.” Coincidentally, a lion was passing nearby who overheard their conversation. Upon hearing the older sister’s wish, he transformed himself into a handsome young man and went to find her.
The younger sister asked, “What did you say just a moment ago?” The older sister replied, “I joked that I am so tired of clearing these weeds that if there was a man who came here to help me, I would follow him anywhere.” The lion, having approached the sisters, seized the opportunity and interrupted their conversation saying, “If that’s the case, I can help you clear the weeds. But, both of you will have to cover your eyes until I am finished.”
The sisters did as the lion requested. The older sister covered her eyes completely using the cloth of her turban. They wondered: What is this lion in the form of a young man? What does he do? How could he think we wouldn’t recognize him at all? The younger sister, however, only covered her eyes with her hand, leaving space between her fingers that she could peek through and see clearly. She watched the man transform into a large lion, and use his tongue to lick the grass. In merely a moment, all of the weeds were felled.
Once he finished, the lion told the sisters they could look again. They opened their eyes and saw that the grass had been cleared. The lion said to the sisters, “I helped you clear the grass. Now, you must keep your promise.” The older sister couldn’t refuse and followed the lion. The younger sister ran home in fear, crying out for her sister, “The lion with the striped belly…that striped lion is going to eat my sister!” The older sister could hear her sister’s cries and said to the lion, “My sister is calling for me.” The lion said it wasn’t the sister’s voice and drowned out the sound of the cries saying, “Lo lo lo, it is just the sound of rubbing wood” and continued on their journey. The sister repeated herself many times, saying her sister was still calling for her. Each time, the lion drowned out the sound just the same, until she could no longer hear her sister calling for her.
The lion took the girl back to his home and told her, “You stay home and cook the rice. I will go and find food— perhaps some fish to eat. While you are cooking the rice, do not drain the water under the stove. Drain it somewhere else.” Afterward, the lion took his children and left the house. The girl waited in the back while the rice steamed. Once it was finished, she remembered the lion’s warning not to drain the water under the stove and wondered why he had forbidden it. Curious, she drained the water there anyway, and suddenly an old woman emerged from the stove with disheveled hair.
Startled, the girl asked the old woman, “Grandmother, where did you come from? Why were you in the stove?” The grandmother pleaded, “Child, please help pick out the lice from my head, then I will tell you everything.” So, the girl began to help pick the lice from the grandmother’s hair. The grandmother asked her, “Child, why did you come here? How did you get here? This is a lion’s house, not a human’s house. The lion told you to steam some rice while he was gone. But now, he is out foraging for ingredients— vegetables, onions, cilantro, and lemongrass. He is going to come back here and use them to make a meal out of you.” The girl replied, “If that’s the case, then tell me what I should do!” The grandmother instructed, “Cry out for a hawk to come and bring you home. Call for the moths to come and nibble at tree trunks until dust falls, so that if the lion and his children look up at the tree and see it is where you and the hawk have landed to rest, the dust will fall into their eyes, and blind them. Call out to the hawk and the moths by saying, “Hawk, please take me home, and I will feed you and your offspring chickens for seven generations. Moths, please help me break down the trees to dust, I will reward you with the walls of my house.”
Upon receiving this advice from the grandmother, the girl called out for the hawk without hesitation. The hawk came and took her home. Shortly after, the lion and his children returned home. They looked for the girl, but she was not to be found anywhere in the house. When the lion happened to look up at the sky, he saw that the hawk had picked up the girl and was flying her far away. The lion and his pride chased after the two of them, who had just stopped to rest on the branch of a Bodhi tree. The lions caught up to them and began to gnaw at the trunk of the Bodhi tree. When the girl saw this, she cried out for the moths to help, just as the grandmother had told her. The moths came and chewed at the trunk of the Bodhi tree until dust began to fall. But, the lions did not dare look up. Although the hawk was exhausted, he picked up the girl and continued flying her home. The lions, unaware, continued chewing at the trunk of the tree until it fell. They walked to the end of the tree, but still did not find the girl or the hawk, and decided to continue chasing after them.
The hawk rested on a total of six Bodhi trees, the lions following and knocking each of them down. As they neared the girl’s home, the hawk needed to rest once more, and this time landed upon a banana tree. When the lions arrived, they looked up at the girl and the bird among the leaves of the banana tree and said to themselves, “The other trees had only one small trunk, but the trunk of this one is so wide, and is so much tougher. I cannot bite anymore,” and decided to return home, disappointed.
While exhausted, the hawk continued to fly the girl home. When they arrived, he left her on the roof of the house and flew away. The girl’s younger sister was sitting on the front porch weaving a piece of cloth. To get her attention, the older sister took off her ring and tossed it down into the sister’s loom. The younger sister picked up the ring and said, “Isn’t this my sister’s ring?” Confused, she looked up to see where the ring had fallen from and saw it really had come from her sister, who was there on the roof. The younger sister called out for her parents to bring a ladder to help her sister down from the roof.
Even though she was home safe, the girl continued having nightmares about the lion. She confided in her parents about the nightmares, and they instructed her to stay home, and not go out to the fields to work. She followed her parents’ instructions carefully until one day she decided she wanted to carry a bundle of rice to a farm not far from the village, thinking that such a short trip would not be a problem. Before leaving, she asked her parents for their opinion, they agreed that it was okay, and let her go on her way.
But, when she arrived at the farm, she saw the lion who had chased and tried to eat her was already there. The lion said to her, “I am so clever! Now I can eat you to my heart's content and you won’t be able to escape!” The girl responded quickly, “Don’t eat me! I didn’t bring the rice here for nothing. I brought it to brew the rice liquor for our wedding.” Upon hearing this, the lion was delighted and changed his mind about eating the girl. He said to her, “If that’s the case, then good. When shall we marry? When the time comes, I will come and find you.” The girl replied, “We shall marry after seven days and seven nights.” The lion returned home joyfully, knowing he would be able to marry the girl soon.
When the girl had finished brewing the liquor and it was time for the wedding, the lion was accompanied by six other companions from his pride of lions. But, the villagers also attended the wedding to trick the lions into getting drunk. The lions drank and drank the rice liquor until they were so drunk they couldn’t even stand up. One by one, the lions lay down on the floor of the house and fell asleep. As they lay there, their tails slipped through the cracks in the floorboards, down into the chicken coop below. Awoken and seeing the chickens below, the lions cried out with excitement and determination.
As for the young woman, she was put in a seven-level iron cage, out of fear that the lion would grab her and run away. Then, the villagers worked together to capture and stab all seven of the lions. Eventually, they captured and killed all of the lions, except for the bridegroom. No matter how hard they tried or how many times they stabbed him, the lion would not die. Eventually, the villagers cut his head off, and it rolled into the iron cage where the young woman was hiding inside. Teeth still gnashing, the lion’s head bit at the bars of the cage, prompting the villagers to continue to try to stab him. The villagers slashed at the bars of the cage and shattered each level until they reached the seventh one. In doing so, the young woman’s big toe was stabbed, killing her instantly. The lion, too, died at that very same moment.
Upon their deaths, the villagers decided to cremate and bury the bodies of the young woman and the lion separately. However, as the villagers decided, the sky turned dark, and heavy rain clouds began to roll in. Seeing this, the villagers agreed that, “The young woman and the lion must have been soulmates. They must be cremated in the same place.” So, the villagers cremated the young woman and the lion on the same mountain. As their bodies were cremated, the fire of the funeral pyre blazed with a sound as loud as thunder.