Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) by Moss Roberts Page B

straightened her tail and made a feast of the pig. Afterwards she looked once at the woodsman and departed. Later this district was named after the trusty tiger.
    — 
Wang Yu-ting

The Repentant Tiger of Chaoch’eng
     
    A woman of Chaoch’eng who was over seventy years old had an only son. One day he went into the mountains and was eaten by a tiger. The old woman grieved and grieved, ready to give up her life. Then with vociferous cries she complained to the local authorities.
    “How can a tiger be subject to the law?” said the magistrate with a smile. This only aggravated the old woman’s tantrum, and when the magistrate scolded her she would not be intimidated. Because he felt sorry for her, he kept his own temper and even ended by agreeing to have the beast apprehended.
    The old woman knelt down before him. She refused to leave until the warrant was actually issued, so the magistrate called for a volunteer on his staff to go and make the arrest. Li Neng, an agent who was drunk at the time, came forward and took the warrant, and the old woman left satisfied.
    When Li Neng sobered up, he regretted his offer. Still, he assumed that the warrant was only a ruse to stop the old woman from creating a nuisance, so he turned it back in to the magistrate casually. But that official said angrily, “You gave your word you’d do it. How can I accept a change of mind?”
    Cornered, the agent appealed for another warrant to deputize some hunters, and this the magistrate granted. Day and night Li Neng and his hunters now stalked the mountain hollows in hopes of catching a tiger. But more than a month passed without success,and the agent was given a severe beating of one hundred strokes. Having nowhere to turn for redress, he presented himself at the shrine east of the town. There he called on his knees for the local deity, crying until he had no voice.
    Soon a tiger came up. Li Neng was aghast, expecting to be eaten. But the tiger entered the shrine and, looking steadily at the agent, sat down on its haunches in the doorway. Li Neng called to the tiger as though it were a deity: “If it was you who killed the woman’s son, then you should submit to my arrest.” Then the agent took out a rope and tied it around the tiger’s neck. The tiger dropped his ears and accepted the rope, and the agent led the beast to the magistrate’s office. The magistrate asked the tiger, “That woman’s son—you ate him?” The tiger nodded.
    “Those who take life must die,” continued the magistrate. “That law stands from oldest times. Besides, the poor woman had only one son. How do you suppose she’ll survive the years that remain to her? However, if you should be able to serve as her son, I shall spare you.” Again the tiger nodded. So they removed the ropes and sent the animal away, though the old woman was grieved that the magistrate did not make the tiger pay with its life.
    When the morrow dawned, the old woman opened her gate to find a deer’s carcass, which she took and sold for her daily necessities. This became a custom, though sometimes the tiger would bring money or silk in his mouth and flip it into her yard. And so the woman became quite well-to-do—far better cared for than when her son was alive. She grew to feel deeply grateful for the tiger’s kindness. Eventually the tiger would come and lie under the eaves of her house the whole day, and the people and livestock no longer feared it.
    After several years the old woman died, whereupon the tiger came and bellowed in the front hall. The woman had saved up enough for an ample burial service, and her kinsmen laid her to rest. When the mound over the tomb was completed, the tiger suddenly bounded up. The mourners fled, and the tiger went straight to the front of the tomb, roared thunderously for a long while, and then departed. Local people set up a shrine to the loyal tiger by the eastern outskirts of the township, where it remains to this day.
    —
P’u