Part Four of the shelf: the seventh story of Palace Tales (London and New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900) by H. Fielding — Harold Fielding Hall (1859–1917), who spent years in Burma in the government service and heard these stories in the palace world of Mandalay. Billed by author and book, as tales of the old Burmese court; not a survey of all Myanmar's peoples, and no completeness is claimed. Three of the book's tales stand set aside under the shelf's standing rule and are named in the shelf register; this tale stands alone as one part, exactly as its fellows did.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
The Adventure of the Cheap Baby — the King is tired from reforming the justiciary, and the Queen holds that cases of women and children should be tried by women. So the King, with a wicked light in his eye, gives her a case to try herself: two criminals have stolen a boatman's baby, kept it a whole night, and left it nearly dead with hunger. The Queen appoints her court from her maids of honour — Ma So and Ma Hla as secretaries, a third girl as the "royal voice" — the gong sounds, twenty soldiers march in with drawn swords, and the chains of the accused come clanking down the corridor. What the court sees when the ranks open, what the "royal voice" learns kneeling beside the boy, and the sentence the Queen pronounces at last, is the tale: a palace comedy about a baby bought, in all innocence, for one rupee.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:56 The Adventure of the Cheap Baby
H. Fielding, Palace Tales (London and New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900) — public domain.
Narrated by Mira. Music: opening and closing theme, "Calm After the Current" — heard at the introduction and the close only; the tale itself is read dry.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
Burmese folk tales · Myanmar folk tales · folk tales of Burma · Palace Tales · H. Fielding · Mandalay palace tales · world folk tales · free audiobook
