Reading Notes: Tales of a Parrot, Part A

     

The Parrot. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

    I read Four Rich Persons who Became Poor from the Tales of a Parrot unit. I really enjoyed this story! I thought it was super cool because, to me, it felt like there was a story inside of another story. The parrot's master is supposedly away with business and his mistress is seeing her lover, so the parrot delays her from seeing her lover each night with a story. This is one of the parrot's stories. The story starts off by giving a little bit of background information on why the parrot is telling these stories. The mistress expresses her concerns to the parrot and says that the parrot is making her lose time every night and that she is overwhelmed by love. The parrot tells her it's important to take into account what friends say, which leads the parrot into another story.

    The story is one of four friends that all live in poverty. The friends went to visit a philosopher who decided to have pity on them and gave them each a magical ball. The philosopher told them to put a ball on each of their heads and when it falls off to dog in that spot. When the first ball fell from one of the friends' head, they dug and found copper. The friend told the others they could stay there with him if they wanted copper that way they did not have to risk potentially not finding any gold. The next ball that fell from one of their heads led to a silver mine. The two friends remaining decided they did not want the silver and wanted to continue on in hopes of finding something better. The next ball that dropped led to a gold mine; however, the guy that still had a ball on top of his head did not want the gold either. He was wanting something better. When the ball finally fell off of the last guy's head, he dug and found an iron mine. He tried to find his friend that found the gold mine and he could not find him. He decided to go back to the iron mine that he found, and he couldn't find it again. He tried to locate the philosopher and he could not. He was left with nothing but extreme poverty since he did not listen to any of the advice from his friends.

    The parrot wraps up the story by telling the mistress that if people do not listen to the advice of their friends that they will ultimately suffer and be unhappy. Now, the mistress wanted to leave to see her lover but the night was already over, and once again, the parrot had delayed her.

    I really enjoyed reading this because it was like two stories in one. I also felt like the story about the friends was very simple but could still have a lot of meaning and purpose behind it! I would love to create my own version!

Story source: The Tooti Nameh or Tales of a Parrot, by Ziya'al-Din Nakhshabi (1801).