u don't mean what you say, cruel king," answered the
messengers. "You should not judge before the fight is over."

"What fools, what fools!" exclaimed the king of the monkeys. "Go
to your ruler and tell him my answer," and he drove the poor little
creatures away.

When the king of the dragon-flies received the reply, he immediately
ordered his soldiers to go to the battle-field, but without anything
to fight with. Meanwhile the monkeys came, each armed with a heavy
stick. Then the monkey-king shouted, "Strike the flying creatures
with your clubs!" When King Dragon heard this order, he commanded his
soldiers to alight on the foreheads of their enemies. Then the monkeys
began to strike at the dragon-flies, which were on the foreheads of
their companions. The dragon-flies were very quick, and were not hurt
at all: but the monkeys were all killed. Thus the light, quick-witted
dragon-flies won the victory over the strong but foolish monkeys.

Notes.

A Visayan variant, "The Ape and the Firefly" (JAFL 20 : 314) shows
the firefly making use of the same ruse the dragon-flies employ to
get the monkeys to slay one another. The first part of this variant
is connected with our No. 60. The "killing fly on head" incident we
have already met with in No. 9, in the notes to which I have pointed
out Buddhistic parallels. It also occurs in No. 60 (d). In a German
story (Grimm, No. 68, "The Dog and the Sparrow") the sparrow employs
the same trick to bring ruin and death on a heartless wagoner who
has cruelly run over the dog.

A closer analogue is the Celebes fable of "The Butterfly and the Ten
Monkeys," given in Bezemer, p. 292.

Our story belongs to the large cycle of tales in which is represented
a war between the winged creatures of the air and the four-footed
beasts. In these stories, as Grimm says in his notes to No. 102, "The
Willow-Wren and the Bear," "the leading idea is the cunning of the
small creatures triumphing over the large ones .... The willow-wren
is the ruler, for the saga accepts the least as king as readily as
the greatest." For the bibliography of the cycle and related cycles,
see Bolte-Polivka, 1 : 517-519, and 2 : 435-438, to which add the
"Latukika-jataka," No. 357, which tells how a quail brought about
the destruction of an elephant that had killed her young ones. I am
inclined to think that the Bicol and Visayan stories belonging to this
group are native--at least, have not been derived through the Spa