Santhal Folklore – The Billy Goat
This story, The Billy Goat (or “Ram Chhagol” in Bengali vernacular), is taken from a book called ‘Saontali Lok Katha’ written in Bangla by Nandalal Bhattacharya, who authored a number of books on the collection of folk tales from multiple language-regions in India. The free form English translation is done by Amit Mukhopadhyay.
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That was the Billy goat, famous for its long beard and long horns. Very distinctively noticeable within the herd of the grazing cattle. With that billy goat and a lot many other cows and goats, the boy takes them for grazing into a very old forest away from the village.
There was a hillock at the entrance of the jungle. That would be about 15-20 feet high, in the cave of that hillock there was a tiger’s den. When the shepherd boy took the herd for grazing there in the jungle, the tiger has gone out somewhere else in search of food.
The billy goat is by nature compelled to ride on the top of anything that is on the height. The moment it saw the hillock, the desire to get to the top got in its head. Step by step the goat gets on the top of it. And reaching on the top it started dancing out of sheer delight. Out of delight it doesn’t even recognize that the day has moved into the evening.
When he could realize that the time has passed by, the Sun has already set in the west. He hastily wanted to get down from there, but getting down is not that easy. In fact it can’t get down from the hill top. And the shepherd boy, forgetting him at the hill top, comes back home with the rest of the herd by the evening, leaving him behind alone.
While entering the village, returning home, the shepherd boy noticed that the billy goat was missing in the herd homeward bound. Out of fear he drives the rest of the herd home and declares that the billy goat went missing.
Listening to this, his father asked him, “Where did you take them to feed?” May be the leopard or any other animal has taken him off.”
“No dad, had that have happened, I would’ve been the first person to know, I kept them under a trict watch. I took them to the old forest towards the hillock,” the boy replied.
His father said, “Well in that old forest, where the hillock is there? There is a tiger that dwells in that cave, then it must have been eaten by that tiger.” Then asked the fellow villagers to look for the goat, just in case it’s been lost on the way back home. “Could you all please help me locate the billy goat just in case it got lost on the way back home?”
