Chinese Fables and Folk Stories/The Snail and the Bees
THE SNAIL AND THE BEES
THE MOD[1] AND THE FON
蜂蝸之爭
One day the king of the bees with his followers passed by the snail's door with a great noise. The mother snail said, "I have sixteen babies asleep on a leaf, and they must sleep fifteen days before they can walk. You will surely wake them. You are the noisiest creatures that pass my door. How can my children sleep? Yesterday your family and a crowd of your silly followers were here and made a great noise, and now to-day you come again. If I lose one baby because of all this, I will go to your house and destroy it. Then you will have no place to live. Do you know that this tree belongs to me? My master planted it twenty years ago, that I and my children might feed on its fruit. Every year your people come here when my tree has flowers upon it and take the honey away from them; and you not only rob me, but while you are doing it, you make loud and foolish noises. If you do not go away, I will call my master and my people."
The king bee answered, "You have no master in the world. You came from the dirt. Your ancestors all died in the wilderness and nobody even cared, because you are of no use to the world. Our name is Fon (Bee). People like us and they grow fat from our honey, which is better than medicine. My people live in all parts of the world. All mankind likes us and feeds us flowers. Do you think you are better than man?
"One day a bad boy tried to spoil our house, but his mother said, 'You spoil many things, but you shall not trouble the bees. They work hard every day and make honey for us. If you kill one bee-mother, her children will all leave us and in winter we shall have no honey for our bread.' And the boy obeyed. He might catch birds and goldfish, destroy flowers, do anything he wished, but he could not trouble us, because we are so useful. But you, slow creeper, are not good for anything."
Then the snail was angry and went to her house and said to her family, "The bees are our enemies. In fifteen days, five of you must go to their house and destroy it."
So they went. But when they reached the bee's house, they found no one there; and they said, "We are glad, for we can eat their honey." And they ate honey until sunset. Then the bee king and all his people in great numbers came with joyous singing, drumming, and dancing to their home.
When the bee king saw the five snails in his house he said, "Friends, this is not your home nor your food. Why do you come here and eat all our honey? But it is late, and you are welcome to stay overnight with us, if you do not hurt our children."
The big snail only laughed and answered, "This is very good honey. I have moved my family here. We will stay not only one night or two nights, but forever, and we will eat your honey for our food as long as it lasts."
The bee king said, "I will allow you to stay only one night here. You can not live in my house. You do no good thing to help. I am afraid even to let you stay one night. My honey may be all taken and the babies killed while we sleep to-night."
And he said to the wise old bees, "Do not sleep. We can not trust them." The next morning the wise bees came and told the king, "Thirty-five babies died last night. The snails crept all about our house and poisoned them. And they left much mouth-dirt in the honey so that we fear it will kill even man to eat it. We must drive them away, O king."
"One day more and if they do not go, we will do some other thing," said the bee king.
Then he went to talk to the snails again and said, "Friends, you are looking fat; I know you are satisfied here and like my honey, but why do you kill my people and why do you spoil our honey? I think I know why. I believe you are an enemy, for I remember now that I met a snail mother some time ago, who scolded me and my people. I believe you are her children.
"Be that as it may, I now tell you that if you snails do not leave my house before to-morrow at midday, you die here."
"Do what you will," said the snail, "we will stay. We are a free people. We go where we will, we eat what we like, and just now we like honey. We shall eat all the honey you have, if we wish it. At any rate, we will stay now, for we would like to see what you can do that is so great."
Then the bee king looked grave and called all his soldiers together, and told them to prepare for battle. The first order was, "Make ready your wax until midday!" The second order was, "Sharpen your swords and be ready!"
The great army of thousands with sharpened stings was commanded to make the noise of battle and sting to the death if need be.
The snails were frightened at the battle cries and drew into their shells. Then the king ordered the soldiers to bring wax quickly. And while thousands of bees kept the snails frightened by the great noise of battle, other soldiers filled the snails' mouths with the wax; and in two hours they were sealed so that they could not move nor breathe.
The bee king then said to the snails, "At first I thought you were friends, and I offered you shelter for the night and all the honey you could eat. But you thought the Creator made the earth for you alone and nothing for any one else. With such natures as yours, if you were as large and powerful as the birds or the beasts, there would be no room for any other creature in all the world. Truly you spoke, when you said you would stay, for now you die."
Then the king moved all his people away to a new house and left the snails to die.
One day when the master came to get honey and saw the empty house and the five dead snails, he said, "This bee house, with all the honey, is poisoned. It must be cleansed."
And the dead snails and the spoiled honey were sunk into the earth together, but the bees lived on and were happy and useful.
Ee-Sze (Meaning): The proud and selfish want everything, but deserve nothing.
- ↑ This species of garden-snail is found in China, and is about the size of a large Roman snail. It sucks the juice of the fruit while on the trees, eats flies and bugs and, the Chinese say, is fond of sweets. It reproduces every thirty days by spreading a leaf with a sticky substance where the sun shines, the family of young snails coming in about fifteen days.