The Gatiloke opens its eighth part. Old Ta Phok sits drinking tea with the abbot while the temple boys strip his garden bare. A wife, watching her opium-smoking husband ruin the house, talks him onto liquor — and finds the cure worse than the habit. A man sets his bear to guard his forest sleep, and wakes with a broken nose. A monkey, told by two small birds to build itself a shelter, answers by tearing their nest down. Two snakes try their shapes at a garden fence; a sea creature no bigger than a prawn lectures a pond frog on the size of the ocean; and Chao Tris hawks his fish in his palace wife's royal words — to his cost.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
The episode opens and closes with Lightning Crash as its theme, heard also briefly between the stories. Narrated by Felix.
Chapters:
01:37 — Old Ta Phok and the Temple Boy
07:26 — The Woman Whose Husband Smoked Opium
15:11 — The Man Who Kept a Bear
18:40 — The Kraling-Kralong Bird and the Monkey
25:48 — The Many-Headed One-Tailed Snake and the One-Headed Many-Tailed Snake
29:27 — The Ki-Samut and the Pond Frog
34:12 — Chao Tris Who Took a Wife from the Palace
From the Gatiloke by Suttantaprija Ind (1859–1924), Cambodia's treasury of Khmer folk tales, first published in parts in Phnom Penh in 1914–1921 — public domain, and told here in a fresh in-house English rendering made from the Khmer text, in the book's own order. Earlier holds stand as recorded in the collection's written register and in the descriptions of Parts 1–16: the question-chapter of the rascal who should be feared; Bhikkhu Sok, the Pnong teacher; the Singha-To who wanted the chief's daughter; the crocodile and the cart-driver; the hunter and the parrot; the fable of the old woman whom desire unmade; the abbot and his two students; the deer, the crow and the jackal; the jackal and the elephant; the lion and the frog; the rabbit and the tigress; and the goatherd boy — each held back under house rule until it is ruled on by name. One further tale of the book's sixth part — the tale of the village cat and the chap-puk bird — is likewise held back under house rule: its matter is a killing and an eating in the tale's open scene, twice over, and such a tale is not read until it is ruled on; it stands recorded in the register, in its place. Two tales at the close of the book's seventh part are likewise held back under house rule until they are ruled on by name: the lion who loved a cow, whose matter is a poisoning plotted and done, upon a tale of desire; and the monkey and the great hermit, whose matter is a sexual act done by guile on an unwilling other, as the tale's whole engine. Three tales of the book's eighth part are likewise held back under house rule until they are ruled on by name: the servant who killed the watch-crowing rooster, whose matter is a killing plotted in thought and done in secret, as the tale's whole engine; the couple who kept a ska, whose matter is a child dead by a snake's bite and a faithful creature struck down in anger, as the tale's climax; and the bear and the pongro tree, whose matter is a killing directed by one and done by another's axe, as the tale's close. The book's earlier item in this part, the tale of the man who knew how to play the gong, has no text in the collection's transcription as it stands; its collation is still owed, and it was passed in its place. One further tale of the book's eighth part — Chao Vaen, who went to buy spectacles to read broken letters — stands unfinished in the collection's transcription as it stands, its telling breaking off before its close; its collation is still owed, and it was passed in its place.
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