Summary:: The Brave Potter

The Brave Potter

(Luck made him General of the Army)

             It is a folk tale that gives a picture of how an ordinary potter became famous and General of the King’s army.

The narrator narrates two incidents happened simultaneously and later connects them to lead the story forward.

One day after a hard day work a potter arrived home and drank more palm wine to get rid of the tiredness. Soon there was a heavy rainfall and he wanted to fasten his donkey under the stable. But the donkey ran away leaving the chains to the tree. The potter went to the forest in search of his donkey and wanted to punish it when he found it.

Meanwhile in the forest a tiger which was old and ran across the forest for food and tired went to a hut. It crawled under the thatched roof and settled at the door as it was raining. When a woman’s voice screamed inside saying it would better to meet a tiger than to meet a leak.

The tiger mistook the word leak as a dangerous creature and afraid of thinking it might be more dangerous. Soon the tiger fell asleep.

When the potter reached the hut, he mistook the tiger as his donkey. He kicked hard scolding the tiger. The suddenly woken up tiger thought that it might be the leak and started to do as the potter ordered. The potter rode the tiger home and tied it under the tree where usually he ties his donkey.

You may guess that in the morning the people found the tiger tied and praised the otter as brave potter. But poor potter didn’t understand how hid donkey became a tiger.

Few years later war broke out between potter’s country and much stronger enemy. The king with the help of a minister in his court made the brave potter General of his army.

The potter wanted to learn riding a horse in the morning.  But to his surprise when he was tied to the horse with some ropes by his wife the horse galloped towards the enemy’s camp. To let loose from the horse the potter caught a tender tree but it was uprooted to his hands. Watching this the sentry of the enemy’s camp shouted to alert the army, “Run away the Tiger General uprooted a tree in one hand and coming to us. Save your lives.” Immediately the king in the camp wrote an apology letter leaving in the tent fled away.

Thus an ordinary potter became the Brave Potter by luck.