A Long-Bow Story

A grasping banker—called a bunniah in the source—was walking a country lane when he caught up with a farmer headed the same way. He had been lamenting a profitless day; the sight of the man ahead cheered him. Luck at last; perhaps this rustic was worth something. He lengthened his stride.

After civil greetings the banker said dullness had lifted the moment such pleasant company appeared; the miles would now feel short. The farmer answered gladly, yet wondered what topic suited a city guest who cared little for herds and harvests.

“Here is a game,” said the banker. “Each of us will invent the wildest yarn he can, and the first man to show disbelief owes the other a hundred rupees.”

The farmer consented and asked the banker to start, as the greater person. Secretly he vowed that, however absurd the yarn, he would never hint doubt.

So pressed, the banker began. “I was walking along this road one day when I met a trader leading a long train of camels piled with goods—”

“Quite possible,” the farmer murmured. “I have seen such trains myself.”

“One hundred and one camels,” the banker went on, “with nose-strings linking each nose to the tail in front, and stretching nearly half a mile—”

“Well?” said the farmer.

“Well, a kite seized the lead camel and lifted it, struggling, into the sky, and because of the strings the other hundred were hauled up after it.”

“What strength in that bird!” said the farmer. “And—yes—doubtless; what became of them?”

“You question me?” snapped the banker.

“Not in the least!” the farmer answered warmly.

“Now,” the banker went on, “a princess of the next kingdom was sitting in her private garden while a maid combed her hair, her face tilted upward, when that kite with its living chain passed overhead. The camels kicked harder, the kite lost its grip, and all hundred and one beasts tumbled straight into the princess’s left eye!”

“Poor lady,” said the farmer. “Anything in the eye hurts.”

“She shook her head, sprang up, pressed her hand to the eye, and cried out how it stung. Her maid hurried over and flicked up the lid, and out came a camel, which she put in her pocket. Then, twisting up a corner of her headcloth, she fished the other hundred from the same eye and tucked them in with the first.”

The banker paused, out of breath. The farmer looked at him slowly. “Well?” he said.

“I can think of nothing more,” said the banker. “That is the end of it.”

“Marvellous,” replied the farmer, “and surely every word true!”

Now it was the farmer’s turn. “My father was a prosperous man,” he began. “He had five cows, three pairs of oxen, several buffaloes and goats enough, yet what he loved best was a fine mare. One market day a torn saddle rubbed her so badly that by the time they got home she had a sore on her back the size of my palm. It was June, when dust storms come with showers. Dust got into the wound, and with it some grains of wheat, and the heat and the wet made the grain sprout.”

“Wheat will, given a chance,” remarked the banker.

“Soon a crop stood on the mare’s back like a hundred-acre field. We hired twenty reapers to cut it, and got four hundred maunds of wheat from that one back.”

“Fine yield,” the banker murmured.

“And your father,” said the farmer with a smile, “a starved wretch barely clinging to life—” (the banker snorted, but held his tongue) “—came to my father humbly, with his palms joined, and said, ‘I have not tasted food for a week. Great master, lend me sixteen maunds of wheat and I will repay you.’ ‘Of course, neighbour,’ said my father. ‘Take what you need and repay it when you can.’”

“Well?” the banker demanded, eyes hot.

“He carried the wheat off,” said the farmer, “never repaid a grain, and the debt stands. Some days I wonder about court.”

The banker’s thumb raced his fingers; his lips worked sums. “What now?” asked the farmer.

“Wheat costs less; I’ll settle the wheat,” said the banker in flat despair—recalling his own rule bound him to a hundred rupees.

The source closes by reporting a local saying about debt: “Give me the money, or if not that, at least give me the wheat.”

Where this story comes from

Andrew Lang printed “A Long-bow Story” in The Olive Fairy Book (Longmans, Green, 1907), illustrated by H. J. Ford. In his preface Lang says Major Campbell again supplied tales he had collected among the people of India, and that the source of each story is usually named at its end. This one is marked simply “from oral tradition.”

To “draw the long bow” is an old English phrase for telling tall stories. A bunniah, the book’s footnote explains, is a grain merchant and moneylender. The tale ends with a saying still used, the source claims, when someone owes a debt. Nothing has been softened.

Read the original: Andrew Lang, The Olive Fairy Book, 1907 (Project Gutenberg #27826)

Best for ages 6–8 — a funny tall-tale contest in which the farmer turns a greedy moneylender’s invented-story game against him.

A closer reading

The banker makes the contest a test of visible disbelief. The farmer responds to each impossibility as though it were merely inconvenient, so even a hundred and one camels in an eye cannot win the wager. The farmer’s own story changes the stakes by placing the banker’s family inside the fiction.

At that point, either response costs the banker something: denying the debt concedes the wager, while accepting it appears to acknowledge a smaller obligation. He chooses the cheaper loss. This is a comic trap created by their agreement, not evidence that an invented debt would be valid in a real dispute. The farmer’s success lies in using the rule strategically, not in telling a more truthful story.

Try this with the story

Draw a two-branch decision tree for the banker’s final choice: deny the wheat debt or accept it. Label the cost attached to each within the game. Then explain why the tale’s earlier physical impossibilities do not create the same trap.

Talk about it

• What counts as losing under the banker’s rule?
• Why does mentioning the banker’s father change the game?
• Is the farmer’s tale more truthful, or simply more strategically constructed?

Related stories

• Jackal or Tiger? — another Indian story from The Olive Fairy Book, Lang’s collection of 1907
• Mr. Won’t-Give and Mr. Won’t-Leave — a greedy man meets a sharper trickster, much as the banker does here
• Harisarman — a comic Indian tale about a bluffer whose lucky guesses keep paying off