In folktales, we often find birds and animals talking and behaving like human beings. Sometimes they prove to be more than a match for their human counterparts, as is the case in the following folktale from the Santal tribes. There was a poor cowherd called Sona who had bought a newborn calf. When he was returning with it to his village, night fell. He stopped at the next village on his way. He requested an oilman to let him stay for the night.
The greedy oilman saw the lovely calf and agreed. He gave Sona dinner and let him sleep in the verandah. In the middle of the night, the oilman got up and took out some oilcake that he used to feed his bullock. He moistened the oilcake and plastered it on the calf. Then he untied his bullock and took it where the calf was. The bullock started licking the calf. The oilman ran out into the village and started shouting that his bullock had given birth to a calf. The entire village gathered in his stable.
Sona, who slept through all of this, went to untie his calf in the morning but was stopped by the oilman, who claimed the calf as his own. Sona gathered the villagers, but they asked why a bullock should lick a calf if it had not given birth to it? Also, no villager had seen Sona arrive in the village with the calf. A dejected Sona went to the nearby forest and lay down under a tree. Seeing him sad, a chappa (nightjar bird) came down from a tree and asked him what the matter was. Sona told him. The bird said that it would argue the matter for Sona but would need help from a jackal.
The jackal agreed to help Sona. Sona brought the villagers to the forest where his two advocates were, but found them sound asleep. Sona was confused. Just as the villagers were about to go away, the nightjar and the jackal woke up with a start. The nightjar said, ‘I had a dream. I saw two nightjar eggs and one egg was sitting on top of the other. No mother bird was sitting on them. Will you please explain its meaning?’ The jackal said that he too had had a dream, ‘I saw that the sea was on fire and all the fishes were being burnt.’ The villagers said, ‘Both the dreams are meaningless. An egg cannot sit on another egg and the sea cannot catch fire.’ The nightjar said, ‘Then how can a bullock give birth to a calf ?’ The villagers agreed that they were wrong. They awarded the calf to Sona and fined the oilman.