Once upon a time, in ancient times, one man agreed with his two wives that the next day the three of them would go to make sago. When they came to the forest, the husband cut down a sago palm, cut a large hole in the trunk, and his wives set to work. Meanwhile, the husband went fishing. He came to the pond, took out his eyes, laid them on the shore and dived. Fish and crabs instantly surrounded him and dug into his eyelids and empty eye sockets. The man crawled ashore, threw the catch into the basket and began to touch his eyes. When he finally found them, he inserted them into the eye sockets and took the fish to his wives. They asked him:
-Where did you catch this fish?
“In a big swamp,” answered the husband.
He didn't want them to find out how he fished.
In the evening they went home, and the next day they went for sago again, and the husband again began to fish - just as the day before. Nobody knew how he did it.
But one day, when he took out his eyes and jumped into the water, a bird saw them - at that time it was drinking from the pond. The bird instantly swallowed both eyes, and then flew up into a tall tree.
Coming out of the water, the man began to look for his eyes, but could not find them. Then he shouted to the wives:
- Come here, look for my eyes! The wives came and asked:
- What happened?
- Look for my eyes, I can’t find them.
-Where are you taking them?
“I put them somewhere on the shore,” he said, “look carefully.”
- They are nowhere to be found.
“Then look in the stomachs of birds,” he asked. The wives made a small bow, shot some kind of bird and gutted it, but found nothing. They shot a few more birds, brought them to their husband, and he gutted them, but also found nothing. After some time, a large bird, having swallowed his eyes, flew from a high tree and sat on a low one, and there one of the women shot it. She gutted the bird and found her husband's eyes inside. The women washed them, inserted them into the husband’s eye sockets, and he exclaimed:
- I see again!
“If you do that again,” the wives said, “we won’t look for them.” You are a deceiver - after all, you told us that you were fishing in a large swamp.
The man was very glad that his eyes were found and he can now see again. And when they returned home and people heard about what happened, everyone began to laugh and say to their husband:
- It’s in vain that you take out your eyes! What if they were caught by a wild pig and it ate them and ran into the forest - where would you look for them then? How could you come up with this?
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru