Once upon a time there lived a farmer and his wife. They had a very beautiful daughter, but she was very lazy and spent all her time playing.

One day her mother got very angry with her lazy daughter and said, “If you don’t help me with the house chores, I will give you in marriage to a fox”

Now at that moment, a fox was going past the farmer’s house and heard what the farmer’s wife said.

So when the lazy daughter grew up to the age to marriage, the fox came with his family and asked for the farmer’s daughter’s hand in marriage.

The farmer and his wife had no choice but to give their daughter in marriage to the fox. As the daughter and the fox leaving the farmer gave the fox a big sack as dowry. It was very heavy and the fox wondered what was inside. He stopped by the way wayside and opened the sack out.

It was farmer’s dog. The dog jumped out and sprang at the fox and the fox fled into the jungle and the daughter returned to her parents with the dog.

And she was never lazy again

At the time of “Sinhala” Kings era, a person called “Andare” lived in Sri Lanka. He was the king’s jester. That means it was his job to make the king laugh. And make people laugh he could!

One day the queen said she wished to meet Andare’s wife. Andare quickly consented. But he said to the queen “Your Majestry, my old woman is slightly deaf so you must speak loudly when you talk to her”. The queen agreed.

And that cunning fellow Andare went home and told his wife that the queen was deaf!

The day queen asked to visit the palace; Andare took his wife to the queen and left from their vicinity. Then the queen was yelling from here and Andare’s wife was yelling from there!

Then what happened? The King came to them and asked reason for the yelling. When the King found the trick of Andare he laughed till tears came from his eyes.

Once upon a time, there was a crow who found a nice bit of cheese and flew up to the branch of a tree with it. Now taking shade under this tree there was a very hungry fox, who at once wanted that piece of cheese.

And do you know what the naughty, cunning fox did? He started to praise the crow.

“Oh crow! What a beautiful bird you are! Your eyes are like rubies! Your beak is as yellow as sunflowers! And what beautiful golden wings!

The crow beamed at these praises.

“How sweet your voice must be” went on the fox.

And to show off his voice, the foolish crow opened his beak and said “Kaak! Kaak!”.

The piece of cheese fell out and the fox gobbled it up and went away laughing.

Once upon a time, there was a very thirsty crow. He went everywhere looking for water and suddenly came upon a jar with a little water at the bottom.

But the crow could not reach the water. However, the clever crow had a wonderful idea.
He flew back and forth with stones in his beak and dropped them into the jar. And as the stones filled little by little the water rose to the top. The crow happily drank his fill and flew away.

Once upon a time, there was a hat seller who went about selling hats. After walking all over the land he became very tired and decided to rest under a tree. So he put his hats down and went to sleep.

Now what he did not know was that there were some very naughty monkeys on that tree and they came down and wore all his hats!

When the hat seller awoke, he looked up and saw lots of funny, furry faces grinning at him and they were wearing his hats!

He tried lots of ways to get his hats back but the monkeys would not part with them.

Then he had a very clever idea. He remembered that monkeys love imitating people. So he threw down the hat he was wearing and the monkeys promptly threw down theirs.

The hat seller gathered his hats and went on his way.

Once upon a time, there were hare and tortoise in a jungle. One day the hare challenged the tortoise to run a race. The tortoise agreed. The day of the race dawned bright and sunny and all the animals of the jungle Elephants, deers, tigers and foxes etc came to watch the race. They all came from far and near.

The race began. The hare ran and ran as fast as he could. The tortoise went slowly. Now the hare looked behind and saw that the tortoise was not even in sight and decided to rest for a few minutes under a tree. But alas! He fell fast asleep.

And the tortoise? Well he went slowly and steadily all the way to finish line and won the race!
Then all the animals cheered the hare.