About this ebook
ISSN: 2397-9607 Issue 288
In this 288th ÿissue of the Baba Indaba?s Children's Stories series, Baba Indaba narrates the Indian fairy tale of ?THE SNAKE PRINCE?.
An poor old lady checked her larder and found she only had enough rice for one last meal. Resigning herself to her fate, she puts her last cake of soap into her only possession of note, a bronze bowl, before going to the river to have a final wash, for she did not want to found dead and dirty. She covered her bowl with a towel and set off on the final journey of her life.
After washing in the Brahmaputra river, she picked up her towel and was astonished to see a snake curled up in the bowl. After drying off she noticed that snake had not vacated the bowl and so she covered the snake walked on home.
At home she took the towel off the bowl and shook out the contents. She was astonished to find a beautiful necklace fall onto her table with her cake of soap. She peered into the bowl and found it was empty.
The next day she petitioned the king and sold the necklace to him for a tidy sum. No longer would she go hungry, nor want for some of the niceties of life.
Knowing the necklace was valuable, the king locked the necklace in a secure chest and placed it in his vault.
A month or two later they a messenger arrived from a neighbouring kingdom with an invitation to attend a festival and banquet to celebrate the birth of a daughter. This made the king very sad for he and his wife had been trying to have children for a while and had been unsuccessful. However, his wife said, ?let not our sadness also be the sadness of our friends.? Then she said to the messenger ?Of course we will attend,? and dismissed the messenger with the message.
Preparations were put in place for the state visit. Elephants were acquired and their cupola?s were prepared and decorated. Dresses and clothing were taken out of wardrobes and packed in trunks with balls of hardened camphor and other perfumes to prepare them for the long journey ahead.
At the last moment the King goes to his vault to retrieve the necklace he bought from the old lady. Taking the key from around his neck he knelt to unlock the trunk. When he opened the trunk he got the surprise of his life??..! And this is where our story really begins.
What did he find you ask? Download and read the story of THE SNAKE PRINCE to find out what the King found in his trunk and how it changed his life forever.
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Each issue also has a "WHERE IN THE WORLD - LOOK IT UP" geographic challenge section, where young readers are challenged to look up a place on a map somewhere in the world. The place, town or city is relevant to the story. HINT - use Google maps.
Baba Indaba is a fictitious Zulu storyteller who narrates children's stories from around the world. Baba Indaba translates as "Father of Stories".
About the author
The Baba Indaba Children's Stories, published by Abela Publishing, often uses folklore and fairy tales which have their origins mists of time. Afterall who knows who wrote the story of Cinderella, also known in other cultures as The Little Glass Slipper, or Cenerentola (Italian), Cendrillon, ou La petite Pantoufle de Verre (French), Aschenputtel (German), Tattercoats and Cap o? Rushes (English), or Conkiajgharuna (Georgian). There is still debate as to whether the story originated in Egypt or China. So who wrote the original? The answer is simple. No-one knows, or will ever know, so to assume that anyone owns the rights to these stories is nothing but nonsense. As such, we have decided to use the Author name "Anon E. Mouse" which, of course, is a play on the word "Anonymous".
