The Story Of
“Toh Meh
Pah”. Is Toh Meh Pah a real or symbolic person?
Once there were two brothers who lived and
farmed together in the far north. In time, both married and raised
large
families, but they stayed living and farming close to one another.
One day a wild boar came and wrecked the rice
fields. The elder brother, although sixty years old, pursed the boar
through
the forest and found its lair. The boar was rooting about nearby. The
old man
raised his spear and aimed for the pig’s head, just where the long and
lethally
sharp tusks joined the skull on each check. He thrust forward with his
spear
which passed through the boar’s head and pinned it to a tree. The
animal was so
big that the old man couldn’t move it by himself, so he returned home
and told
his sons to go and fetch the carcass. But when they reached the place
there was
no pig – only the spear fixed in the tree, and the two giant tusks
lying on the
ground. The young men picked these up and brought them home, giving the
old
hunter the name Toh Meh Pah, or ‘Boar Tusk’.
Toh Meh Pah decided to make a comb out of one
of the tusks. When he had done so, he combed his hair with it – and
instantly
felt quite young again, not sixty but a mere twenty years old. He
realized that
the comb had magical properties, so he kept it safe. In future,
whenever age
weighed in him, he’d simply take out his comb and shed a decade or two.
With
his youth and vitality assured for ever, it was not surprising that
Toh Meh Pah’s family rapidly increased in number. Soon there were too
many of
them for their land in the hills, so Toh Meh Pah declared that they
have to go
and find a new home where the soil was richer and could support them
all. He
would go ahead and find the place first – and so he set off.
In ever region that he passed through, Toh Meh
Pah tried the same experiment. He dug eight holes in the ground, all
the same
size, and used the earth from the first to try and fill the others. The
richer
the soil, the more it would spring out and expend. Generally the soil
from one
hole would fill two or three more but at last he found a place where
seven
holes could be filled in this way. This was perfect, he concluded, and
he
returned to fetch his family.
So he and his brother and all their children
packed up and moved, following Toh Meh Pah through the forest. After a
long
march they reached a river where they sat down to rest and eat. In the
water
they found some snails, and on the bank they was roselle (hibiscus)
growing.
They’d never tried eating either but they looked good, so fires were
lit and
snails and roselle put on to boil. After a while someone poked one of
the
snails with a knife and said, ‘It’s still hard. And you can see the
blood
coming from it; can’t be cooked yet.’ So they waited, but after several
hours
the snails were still hard and the blood (which was of course the color
from
the rolelle) was still bright. Toh Meh Pah grew impatient, wanting to
move on;
after another hour he announced that he was going ahead with his
family, and
that they’d blaze a trail by cutting down banana trees so that his
brother
could follow when the snails were cooked and eaten. Off he went.
But, wait as the brother’s family might, the
snails never cooked – until at last some Chinese travelers came by and
laughed
at them and showed them how to take the end off the snails and suck out
contents. They ate quickly and set off to follow Toh Meh Pah – but
they’d
waited so long that the bananas had grown up again and the trail was
obscursed.
And that was the last the Karen ever saw of Toh Meh Pah, or his
children, or
his magic comb.
Prevoius
Back to content | Back to main page
