Week 10 Story: Crocodile Tears

Where did the phrase come from? 

This is the story of why we call insincere tears, "crocodile tears." It all started when a husband and wife crocodile were relaxing in the river under the shade of some fruit trees. The wife kept hearing a rustling above her, and the noise was making it hard for her to sleep. When she looked up, she saw a monkey looking through the tree for some fruit to eat. Angry that he had disturbed her slumber, she woke her husband.

"Honey, I cannot get any sleep with all of that noise. Make that monkey stop." The wife snapped at her husband.

The husband looked up and politely asked, "Sorry to bother you monkey, but my wife is trying to sleep could you try to keep it down?"

The monkey had not realized that there were two crocodiles underneath him. If he had seen them, he would have kept quiet. Genuinely sorry he told the crocodiles, "I am very sorry to have disturbed you two. I thought I was all alone. This tree seems to be out of fruit so I will be on my way."

Happy with how the monkey had responded the husband slowly shut his eyes and was soon fast asleep again. But the wife was not pleased. Why did her husband let the monkey get away? He had always been too caring for other animals. He tried to be a peacekeeper. She wished he would be ruthless. She loved to eat the hearts of monkeys and could not get that monkey's heart out of her mind.

She watched as the monkey leaped to another tree but as he did a branch fell to the ground. This gave the crocodile wife a nasty idea. She went and retrieved the stick and carefully placed it on her back. Then she began to make herself cry.

The husband awoke to the crocodile tears of his wife. Worried that something terrible must have happened to her, he asked her, "My dear, what is wrong? Tell me what you need to stop those sad tears."

The wife told him through floods of tears, "That monkey was mad you made him leave and threw a stick down at me. Why do monkeys have to be such mean animals."

Once the husband heard this, he was furious. He tried to comfort his wife telling her, "Dear please do not cry. I hate to see you cry. I will make that monkey pay." And off the husband swam, set out to kill the monkey that had made his wife cry and bring the heart back to her to show his love.

During this entire facade the crocodile wife had created, the monkey had been watching up in a new tree slight ways down. Even though he was not guilty, he knew he would have to convince the crocodile husband of his innocence.

When the crocodile husband found the monkey, he left the water and waited at the trunk of the tree. Even though the monkey tried to plead with the husband he would not believe that his wife had made everything up. The husband vowed to wait under the tree till the monkey would leave so he could kill him and give his monkey heart to his wife.

Unknown to everyone in the situation a wise lion had watched the entire scene while sunbathing on a rock in view of everything. Seeing the monkey was in great distress he decided to go down and help out. When the lion reached the tree, the crocodile quickly told him, "Do not try to help this monkey he was mean to my wife not once but twice. He must suffer the consequences of his actions!"

The wise lion yawned then laughed and said, "The only animal that needs to suffer the consequences of their actions in your dear wife. Mr. Crocodile, she has played you as a fool. While up on my rock I saw your wife's crocodile tears but they were fake tears so that you would get this monkey's heart for her. This monkey has done nothing wrong."

Confused and hurt the crocodile slunk back into the water towards his wife. He looked at her the solemnly then told her, "From now on, anytime you cry, whether it is real or not, I will assume you are creating fake crocodile tears. No lion or monkey or any other animal will ever be able to trust a crocodile's tears from now on."

And so, this is how insincere tears became known as crocodile tears. And a crocodile's tears have never been trusted since.

******

Author's Notes: In my story, I used elements from W.H.D. short tale, The Crocodile, and the Monkey. In the original story, a crocodile wife merely tells her husband she wants to eat a monkey's heart and is so upset about not having one that she cries "crocodile tears." When I heard this phrase in the original story, I knew I wanted to create a story about the origin of the phrase, "crocodile tear." In the original story, the crocodile husband tries to trick the monkey by offering him a ride on his back across the river to another fruit tree so that he can give his wife the monkey's heart to eat. The monkey catches on to the crocodile's plan and lies to him that he does not keep his heart in his body but in a tree. The husband crocodile gets tricked by the monkey and the monkey is able to live. I deiced to keep the characters, for the most part, the same by having a husband and wife crocodile enjoying time together in the river and the fact that the wife wanted to eat the monkey's heart. However, for my story, I had to make the husband crocodile seem friendlier and caring about the balance of nature, even though once again he can be tricked by another character in the story. Because of the husband's personality, the wife is angry and wants to trick her husband into getting the monkey's heart for her. The monkey character was pretty much the same, just trying to stay alive which is why he leaves when the crocodile asks him nicely the first time. I added the character of the wise lion since this animal would be intimidating to the crocodile so that he would listen to him about the truth. I hope you have enjoyed my story and would love to hear feedback!

******

Image: Saltwater crocodile swimming in a swamp. Source: Wikipedia by Matt

Reading Notes: Reading B: The Giant Crab, and Other Tales from Old India

Friends, Teasing, and Love.

For the second part of the reading of The Giant Crab andOther Tales from Old India by W. H. D. Rouse. I was supposed to read through twelve stories, but one of the stories would not open, so I only got to read eleven. I enjoyed the first story, Birds of a Feather because of the final lesson/poem that was at the end. There is a mean horse Chestnut that does not get along with any of the other horses, and the king uses him to hurt other horses to he can buy the bruised horses at a discounted price. But a horse seller tries to use his mean horse Strongjaw to be mean to Chestnut so that he will not hurt any of the other horses. But when the two horses meet they do not fight but seem to become friends which is how the saying birds of a feather flock together came into play. I think this story can relate and does relate to humans. Like how two troubled teens may not be able to make friends with other students at school but when they meet can become instant friends. This could be a possible rewrite. The next story I thought I could rewrite was the story; Silence is Golden. In the story a lion cub has a lion for a father and a jackal for a mother. As the cub is growing up, he looks like a lion but has the voice of a jackal. Becuase of this when the other lions hear the lion-jackal cub attempting to roar they laugh and make fun of him. He learns that he cannot talk to the other lions, but I am curious how the jackals would feel about the lion-jackal cub. Since he looks like a lion and we can assume he has the power of a lion and they might want to make him their leader. He could intimidate the other animals and the lions. The last story I would like to change is the ending to The Jackal Would A-Wooing Go. In the story, a jackal has fallen in love with a lioness. He gets the courage to go over to her den and ask her to marry him. The lioness gets offended that the jackal even thinks he could marry her because she comes from a higher status than him. Long story short to protect her honor two of the lioness brothers die and then the jackal dies just because the lioness thinks she is too good for the jackal. I think this story could have a more Romeo and Juliet feel. Where the lioness is in love with the jackal but she must hide it from her brother. The couple then decides that they will have to sneak off in the middle of the day to try and escape her brothers. This story could turn into a happier romantic recreation. 

******

Image: Lion love. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Reading Notes: Reading A: The Giant Crab, and Other Tales from Old India

More animal tales. 

From taking Mythology and Folklore, I have become a big fan of the stories with the animal lessons in them, mainly the Jataka Anthology stories. I chose to read The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India by W. H. D. Rouse. The first part of the reading was a collection of twelve different stories. However, I only found a few that I liked and could recreate. This first story idea I came up with was creating a prequel tale to The Giant Crab. In the story, the giant crab kills any animal that comes into the water to drink and eats them (which is how he got so big). In the end, a husband and wife elephant couple trick the crab and crush him to death. I think I could create a story about how the crab became so big and meant to other animals because they picked on him for his small size. Another story that I could possible recreates only came from one line in the story The Crocodile and the Monkey. In the story, the wife crocodile is upset and wants the monkey's heart to eat, and the husband finds this out because she is crying "crocodile tears." When I heard the phrase "crocodile tears, I came up the idea of creating a story about how humans began to use to phase "crocodile tears" meaning someone was fake crying. I could use the wife crocodile to trick the husband by fake crying to get everything she wants, and the monkey helps the husband discover that she is fake crying to get what she wants. The final idea came from a combination of two stories The Monkeys and the Gardner and The Goblin in the Pool. In the story of The Monkeys and the Gardner, the gardener tries to take a break from tending the garden to enjoy himself at a fair. He asks the monkeys that live in the garden to help take care of the plants while he is gone and water them. Sadly, the monkeys pull up the roots of the plants to decided how much water to give each plant based on the length of the roots which obviously kills the plants. The monkeys are seen a foolish and not very smart in the story even though they try to help the gardener out. However, in the story of The Goblin in the Pool, the monkeys know there is a creature in the pond that they want to get water from so they cannot drink from it. A human comes along and helps the monkeys by showing them that they can use a reed to drink out of the pond. In this story, the monkeys can learn from the human on how to drink water without being eaten by the creature. I think the lesson that the monkeys learn in the goblin story can be incorporated into the story from the monkeys in the garden where they learn from watching the gardener how to water the plants.

******

Image: Monkeys in India. Source: Wikimedia Commons