The King’s horn: a moral legend of Sulu

Media

Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: The King’s horn: a moral legend of Sulu
Creator: Minton, Frank Lewis
Language: English
Year: 1928
Rights
Fulltext: 24 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1928 who took places in the preliminaries and finals of the high jump; Teofilo Ildefonso, who won points for the Philippines in swimming; Anselmo Gonzaga, sprinter, and Tuboran Tamsi, swimmer. The captain of the American Olympic track team said of Toribio after he got home that the Filipino should have won first place in the high jump; he never saw such a marvelous natural spring in his life; but Toribio hadn’t the form. Basketball.—Manila and the Philippines in general have seen an active season in the well known cage game. The Ateneo won the N.C.A.A. championship among schools of Manila. This is the big prize in scholastic basketball. They did it by beating Letran college in their final game, 32 to 14. It was the first time in five years that Ateneo had taken the cup. The best brand of basketball is seen in the Army leagues. Most of these have not finished playing. Interservice games have drawn packed houses all season. The American Association Basketball League is the big league among the service men. There is a stiff fight on for suprem acy. Bowling.—Basketball has attracted no more attention than has bowling, both in the schools and in service competition. The Philippine Bowling Association, the big league of pindom, got into action October 2 with eight teams com peting for supremacy. Rivalry is keener this year than ever before. Baseball.—The coming season in the king The King’s Horn: A Moral Legend of Su By Frank Lewis Minton It is easier to close the mouths of rivers than the mouths of men. This is a Sulu proverb. Once upon a time, according to the aged story tellers and sages of Sulu, there lived a great and powerful king, an emperor of many lands, who collected tribute from all the islands of the east. Because of his tremendous power and wealth, everyone thought that this monarch must be a very happy man, and perhaps he would have been—for he was a wise ruler—but for the fact that he was afflicted with an unsightly and rather ludicrous blemish. He had a small horn grow ing near the top of his head. Of course the people did not know of the king’s hom, as it was ordinarily covered by his crown or turban, and he was most careful to keep it hidden from his wives and the household servants. But the fear that it would eventually be discovered, and would make him ridiculous in the eyes of his subjects, preyed upon the monarch’s mind until it became an obsession which threatened to unseat his reason. It was the king’s habit to have the court barber cut his hair at regular intervals, as he was most fastidious in matters of personal appearance; but after the appearance of the hom, he allowed his hair to grow to such length that it became quite noticeable, and finally caused sarcastic comment among his wives. So the king, being a man of great wisdom and resource fulness, decided upon a novel and obviously feasible plan to guard his secret: He would kill the barber immediately after having his hair cut, so there would be none to betray him. The king was a man of action. The morning after he had hit upon his ingenious plan, he appeared with a stylish haircut. His wives fawned upon him, and the public smiled approv ingly. That same afternoon it was announced that the court barber had mysteriously dis appeared. A searching party was organized, but no trace of the missing barber could be found, and it was finally decided that he had been spirited away by a jinn, fallen a victim to black magic, or possibly had been seized by a crocodile. Four weeks later the acting court barber disappeared under circumstances similar to those surrounding the mysterious evanishment of his luckless predecessors. And thereafter, with appalling regularity, the court barbers of Mantapuli* disappeared one after another within a few days after the advent of each new of sports looks promising indeed. Two teams, one from Cavite navy yard, and one from Meralco, are pledged to enter the Philippine BaseballjLeague this year, and Judge.Frank B. Ingersoll, the/Judge Landis of the Philippines, has-been working on organization of service Captain “Bill” Young teams until the optimistic tone of his predictions begins to build up a solid background. There will be something doing, and baseball in the islands is due for the jolt that it needed last year to bring it to life. moon. The terrifying mystery of the disappear ing barbers caused much consternation among the people, and actual panic to the tonsorial craftsmen of the capital. No trace was ever found of the missing men. True, a turban which may have belonged to one of the barbers was found in the river, and some maintained thereafter that the crocodiles had eaten the barbers. But why should the crocodile attack but once each rnoon, always at the same time? And why should he invariably choose the court barber? Sage, soothsayer, priest and medicine man vied with each other in theorizing over the fate of the unfortunates. The consensus was that it was all the work of wicked jinns. No one dreamed that the king had killed his barbers. Why should he try to keep the deed a secret? He was an absolute monarch. It was his right, even his duty, to kill such of his subjects as dis pleased him. But no amount of moralizing could alter the dreadful fact. Barbers began surreptitious migration^ to parts unknown. Barbers complained of the lack of apprentices to their honorable craft;. Barbers looked fear fully at each other, wondering who would be the next to receive the dread command to attend the king. Finally, when only a scant half-dozen barbers were left in Mantapuli,, the choice of the king fell upon one Uzman, jan old man who was accounted very wise. Uzman received the summons smilingly, and with a reassuring word to his lamenting friends and family, arrayed himself in his finest robes. “I am an old man,” he said, “and I doubt if either jinn or crocodile would have much use for this tough old carcass.” Now be it said to the king’s credit, that he had long cudgeled his brain in an effort to devise some scheme whereby he could avoid the monthly murders of his barbers. He was not particularly cruel at heart, and the disposition of the remains entailed’a lot of hard, uncongenial work which could not be trusted to any of his servants. Moreover, he had taken.an instant liking to old Uzman, who was deft in his ministrations, a model of decorum, and seemed to have an infinite capacity for silence. So when the monarch’s hair had been cut to his satisfaction, he was loth to strike the blow that would send another court came the Indarapatra, the rulers who flew to Sulu, men tioned in folklore narrated by Dr. N. M. Saleeby. barber to the ugly, wallowing crocodiles at the river bank. And the old man had not once mentioned the king’s deformity, apparently had not even noticed it. “If he had been the ordinary garrulous type,” mused the king, “it wouldn’t have been so bad. There is really some pleasure in killing a barber who talks too much.” So he bade Uzman to sit beside him, and began talking to the old man of current topics, ultimately referring to the dis appearance of the court barbers, and commenting upon some. of the ridiculous theories advanced by the wise men of the kingdom. Then he changed the subject to human weaknesses, notably the prevailing tendency to talk too much and man’s inability to keep a secret. “It is a habit which often proves fatal,” he concluded. Then Uzman arose and addressed his king. “Your Majesty,” he said earnestly, “I under stand your meaning, and appreciate the situa tion in which you are placed. I know, more over, what becomes of the court barbers. I am an old man, somewhat learned, and although my insignificant life is not worth the snap of your Majesty’s fingers, yet would I beg you to spare it for the little time I have left to live; for with age has come wisdom and discretion. Your secret is safe with me; and since the gods command that even the king shall not kill except in cases of necessity, or to glorify them, my death would only cause Your Majesty unnecessary annoyance and, possibly, a measure of sorrow.” The king looked long and searchingly at the barber. “Are you sure,” he demanded sternly, “that you can keep my secret?” “I am sure, O Mighty Emperor,” replied the barber. “I swear it by the honor of my wives and the heads of my beloved sons.” “Your life shall be spared,” decided the king, with a sigh of relief, “and you shall be my court barber to the end of your days.” For several months Uzman lived quite happily in the midst of the luxury'with which the king showered his favorite servants. The old barber’s food was of the choicest from the king’s own table, he was arrayed in silks, the number of his wives had been doubled and he was the favorite companion of the monarch. His former friends who had lamented him at parting, now forgot their fears and became envious of his good fortune. Priest, soothsayer and medicine man secretly hated and feared him for his ap parent immunity to the jinns, and for his rather patronizing manner. A proud man indeed was the court barber of Mantapuli. But there was one fldw in the beautiful fabric of this new life. He was possessed of the greatest secret in the world, and he dared not tell it! He could not tell his admiring friends how im portant a personage he really was. He could not brag to his chattering wives that he was, as he believed, wiser than the king. He mused, “Of what use all this glory if I may not tell it to my sons?” The great secret grew irksome. It .fairly gnawed at his vitals. He became nervous, irritable, morose. He avoided com pany. Fearing for his life, should he let slip some hint of the secret, he drove his wives from his quarters and barred the door so that none might enter unannounced. Often he considered dashing into the street and shouting his secret to the world—until swift death should relieve him from his suffering; or going to the monarch and requesting that he be executed lest he violate the royal confidence. He was not of the stuff of which suicides are made. At last his mind could stand no more. He became partially demented, but even so his dis cretion did not quite desert him. One day he broke completely under the strain. “I will run away,” he decided, “so far that no man can find me, and there I will shout the king’s secret to the very skies—to the very City of the Gods.” He slipped out of the palace, hurried through the outer gate of the city, and dashed into the neighboring wood with a speed well nigh incredible in one so old. “I must . hurry,” he panted, “lest I shout my master’s secret where all may hear.” Hour after hour he pushed blindly on through the forest, stumb ling over jungle vines, falling, cursing, crawling, throughout the day and far into the night, until at last he fell, exhausted and fainting, at the October, 1928 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 25 base of a great narra tree. But the agony of his festering secret was greater even than the pain and exhaustion of his body. “I can not wait longer!" he gasped. Struggling to his feet, he faced the great tree and began shouting over and over at the top of his voice: “The king has a hom! The king has a horn!” Only echo answered him, but the old man— temporarily insane—imagined himself pursued, imagined himself surrounded by the king’s bodyguard; but he was determined to keep on shouting until death overtook him. So great was his emotion that the very at mosphere became charged as with electricity as before a violent storm. The very forest shook, and at last the tension became too great even for inanimate things. There was a blinding flash, a deep booming explosion. The old man was thrown hurtling through the jungle, landing in a limp, exhausted heap in a tangle of high, coarse grass; while the giant nana tree shivered and burst into millions of tiny fragments, as though blasted by some mighty charge of high explosive. Uzman lay unconscious where he fell. At last insensibility gave place to natural sleep, and when he awoke the morning sun was shining through the tree tops, and a thousand song birds rendered a plan of unearthly sweetness. A feeling of infinite relief stole over the old barber. “Now I can die in peace,” he mur mured, as he sank again to sleep. But his time had not yet come. A few hours later he awoke, feeling greatly refreshed. He was, he discovered, very much alive, and very, very hungry. After all, one must attend to the business of life, and after all he had told the great secret, even if no one had heard him, of which he was by no means sure. So old Uzman arose and, in the fear of death, returned to the palace. To the old barber’s gieat relief, apparently no one had heard his frantic shouting, and as he entered the paiace gate he firmly resolved never again even to think of betraying the king’s secret. He must have been insane, he thought, ever to have considered such a th'ng. The palace servants and his wives were somewhat curious about his absence, and the king was rather nettled that his favorite should have left the palace without permission^ but contented himself with remarking that it was “unseemly for an old man with ten wives to go skylarking about like a moonstruck youth.” A few days later, the king, left for a visit to a neighboring principality, and was, probably, waylaid by some hostile band, for neither he nor any of his bodyguard were ever heard from again; and a few days aftet his departure, old Uzman was stricken with a fatal illness. During his hours of delirium, and in his troubled sleep, according to his wives, he was continually mut tering something about a great secret, and shortly before his death he uttered a phrase which has since become a proverb: It is easier to close the mouths of rivers than the mouths of men. And so, according to the story, Uzman carried the king’s secret with him to the grave; but the wise old men of Sulu contend that the barber must have told some one of the monarch’s afflic tion. “Otherwise,” they argue, “how should we know that the king had a hom?” And in truth their theory seems plausible. At any rate, the old men say, if you have some blemish, either physical or spiritual, that you wish to keep hidden, it is well to remember that you are the only person in all Sulu who would not enjoy telling of it. ANIMATED ENGLISH (Continued from page 21) from time to time, had told the children a number of stories concerning the doings of the Little Maharajah and the Little Maharani and the Maharajah’s elephants, and other tales of India and the life there. ’ “Yes, Teacher,” commanded Clinton, “go Kingsley and Miriam Hamilton and (insert) Clinton Johnson—the characters in Mrs. Pendleton’s true story. Clinton is in grammar school in California; when he entered, he was advanced a year. Kingsley and Miriam are in Wooster (Ohio) High School, and topping their on and tell us a story about India. Tell about the Little Maharajah.” Teachet raised her eyebrows. “Please,” added Clinton, who was quick on the uptake. Teacher was a capitalist. "If I tell you a story, you must write it in your own words,” she warned. “That’s what I wanted to do,” affirmed Clinton. “That’s why I asked you to tell us a story now.” So the story was told. And Clinton’s pen then scribbled away industriously. And finally, leading over his effort with an author’s pardon able pride, he exclaimed, “Gee! This is a good story, Miriam! We’ll sure put it in our maga zine. Teacher, please tell us some more stories, ’cause we have to have a lot for our magazine.” “Kingsley ought to write something for it, too,” declared Miriam. She would have no shirkers. Kingsley, because of a less flexible course, was unable to put in much time on original com positions. And, too, he was less imaginative than the younger children, though more logical. He was interested in, and could think of nothing but athletics. Everything he wrote was steeped in athletics. But some of his expositions on How to Secure Teamwork, or How to Choose a Bat, or Should or Should not the Centers (basketball) be Longlegged Men? were little gems of logic, and in them was a clarity of ex pression that was never apparent in any of his written work on Marmion, or The Lady of the Lake, or The Vision of Sir Launfal. Kingsley was unanimously elected Ed’tor-’NChief. At that time the Manila Bulletin was run ning rather serious and lengthy editorials on what the government should or should not do, concerning which there was considerable con troversy between the grownups in the homes of the children, and the latter, aping their elders, fell into serious discussion, and decreed that their school magazine must have its editorials; for, as Miriam pointed out, “The Bulletin Editor is always telling how things ought to be done, so King ought to put some of his how-to-do stories in our magazine." In such manner were Kingsley’s expository themes incorporated in the general scheme and makeup of the school paper, or magazine, rather, for it had become quite a voluminous affair, as befits an organ that is published but once a month. The Maquiling School Magazine was definitely launched upon a literary sea. But Kingsley’s efforts in literature were not confined entirely to ed’torials. One morning Teacher read aloud a certain boys’ story, of the kind Kingsley liked. “That’s a good story,” commented Kingsley, “but, Teacher, why didn’t Wilbur (the chief character) do thus-and-so? That would have made the story more exciting and interesting.” (Incidentally, it was by far the more log:cal course for the hero to have pursued.) Clinton had an idea. He was always having them. “Say, King!” he exclaimed, as excitedly as if he were Columbus discovering a new world, “You write that story as it ought to be writtenJ. Make it a bully one like the stories in my Amer ican Boy Magazine. Start it out with somepin’ excitin’ ’n then go back and explain the excitin’ part.” It will be noticed that Clinton had firmly grasped the chief principle of successful juvenile fiction. So, besides his editorials, Kingsley wrote one story a month, always an athletics story, and the quality of these stories, from a juvenile point of view, may be determined by the comments of his coeditors, to whom he submitted his stories for approval. There was no doubt about the approval, and Kingsley never failed to parade a sheepish grin of gratification over Miriam’s appreciative Peach—ee! or Clinton’s Gee! That's a good one! Ain’t-isn't it, Teacher? Discussions were frequent and informal. Indeed, the children might speak whenever they Popularity that pulls in profits will surely be yours when you advertise in K. O. media. They are all specially designed to create buying interest, and they reach people with money to spend and willingness to spend it. It will pay you to advertise in K. O. media. Investigate! K. O. ADVERTISING CO. Producers of ADVERTISING WITH A PUNCH! 231 Kneedler Building: Tel. 2-60-65 104 Cosmopolitan Building: Tel. 2-59-97 IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL