There was once a slave-girl named Reile in Hangrum, and one feast-day one of the dekachangs made a song on her name, as if she were a mithan for sacrifice.

There were once eight brothers whose parents had died, and having nothing to eat they went to the jhums and searched for tubers which the villagers had thrown away. A

The quail and the squirrel were going to make a boundary between their lands. The squirrel hit the quail, and the quail wept. The barking deer asked why he wept.

Once upon a time there was a boy called Amang, and his parents died when he & his sister were very young. Some people gave them a little, most people

The leopard-cat and the night-jar were friends. They went walking together. The leopard-cat said: "We are only walking together like this; where is your house?" The night-jar showed him her

The tortoise said to the marten: "Friend, let us work in each other's fields. Today we will go to your fields, tomorrow we will go to mine." "Very well," said

There was once a small boy and every day when his parents went to the fields he used to run weeping after them and clamour to be taken too. They

Once, they say, there was a man who went hunting with his eight dogs, and they got so much meat that the house was full of it. He put it

Once there was a man named Nriemreng, and every day while he and his wife were in the fields his little son used to play in the village. Now there

The tortoise went to the marten's jhum. They worked away all morning, and after a while the tortoise asked: "What shall we eat for our midday meal?" "Be quiet," said

The monkey and the barking-deer were friends. The monkey said: "Pretend to be lame." The deer pretended to be lame. A man saw the deer and cried: "Look, look, a

A man used to set basket-traps to catch fish, but every night an otter came and ate the fish in the traps. The man was angry, and said: “Who is eating all my fish? I will set a trap.

Neomi’s descendants determined to build a tower so as to return to Heaven, whence their ancestor came. They built a wooden tower, and when it was very high a man at the top called down for more wood.

A  number of women once went down to the river to fish, and one of them  who was a little ahead of the others found a spot where a hornbill

Once  there was a Kachari Raja, and he married, and his wife bore him a  daughter. When she grew up she was very beautiful and the Raja her  father wished

The Birth of the Spirit. A Zeme Naga Folktale from Ursula Graham's Collection 1940-1944

Once  there was a boy whose parents had died, and he lived in the house of  some relatives, but the man and his wife constantly ill-treated him.  When he went