Vietnamese Legend: Partridge Bird

This story is an attempt by Vietnamese people to explain why a partridge sounds the way it sounds.

Gather around me with some cookies, will you?

A long time ago there was a boy who lost his dad at a young age. His mother mourned over the death for a period of time then decided to remarry. Since the child did not have any other relatives on either side of his family, he was forced to go with his mother to live with her and his stepfather.

The stepfather was a brutal and ill-bred person. He viewed both the mother and child as just people living and eating in his house, nothing more. In the stepfather's eyes, the boy especially was an eye sore since he was not old enough to do anything to help around the house.

The bitterness and hatred the new husband had for the child continued to grow as the days went on. When something went wrong for the stepfather, he would take his anger out upon the little boy. Soon, every day the child was bruised and purple all over.

There was nothing special in the man's house and in fact is he had nothing at all. His living wages were based off going into the forests and getting wood to sell. The woman he just married, on the first day after coming home with him, the man makes her go and chopped down wood so he could sell it in the market.

Unfortunately, that year there was barely any rain, which made finding food become harder. Before the drought, a batch of lumber was able to feed the family for a few days but now it was barely enough for a meal. That the little boy was still young and had no life skills to help during this time became a thorn to the stepfather.

"The child only eats and causes me trouble. He does nothing but burden me," thought the man.

He begged and pleaded with the wife to sell the child to someone else so they could take care of him. No matter what the husband said, the mother refused the idea without a second thought. His mother would rather die with her son than be apart from him.

The desire to kill the child of his wife was all the stepfather could think of. A person's life at that time was worth less than a weed cutter. Furthermore, the man could care less about the boy. The number of people starving continued to increase rapidly as a big batch of wood was now only worth one bowl of rice.

One day when the wife left for the market, the husband used that time to take the child to woods. He lured the small boy by saying, "Do you like to climb the guava trees and catch butterflies? Up in the forests you could do that to your heart's content."

Upon hearing this, the boy begged the stepfather to take him along on the trip to the woods. Amazed by the scenery, the little boy happily trotted behind his stepfather not knowing what tired is. The man led the child deep into the forests. When they arrived to where there were a lot of guava trees, the stepfather told the kid, "Here are the guava trees and your bowl of food. I'll come find you later."

With that being said, the man left the boy without a worry and went off somewhere far away to chop down woods. Later that afternoon, as the man stepped into the house he was shocked to see that the child was home before him. As fate turned out, when the boy was wandering aimlessly in the depth of the woods he came upon a group of monks returning home from their pilgrimage.

The boy was then led home by the monks and with the help of the bowl of rice he was able to have enough energy to return. The stepfather became more and more frustrated as the child told his story. He snapped at the boy.
"So that was the reason why I could not find you?"

And, the legend was born...

That week the stepfather tried another attempt to lure the boy to go with him to the woods. This time he purposely led the child into the unknown part of the forest where no one even dared to enter. When he crept away from the small boy, the stepfather thought to himself.
"If he does not die from the wild beast than he will die from wandering. If that still does not kill him then he will surely die from hunger."
As the afternoon went by and he waited for his stepfather returned, the boy began to despair and started to cry out but only the echo of the forest would reply to him. He ran to search in every direction and corner but the child did not even see a person's shadow.
When the boy became hungry and tired, he took out the bowl of food his stepfather had given him but to his surprise, below a thin layer of rice and vegetables there was only dirt underneath. He was so hungry, the boy started to pick the rice that was covered in dirt and put it into his mouth.
In the end, the boy started to become extremely hungry. He grabbed his bowl and ran everywhere screaming, "Stepfather, where are you? Rice of dirt with pickled eggplant (which translates to Bat cat qua ca). Rice of dirt with pickled eggplant!" His crying did nothing except startle the birds that were resting in the forests. Then the boy died and turned into a partridge bird, who always says, "Bat cat qua ca! Bat cat qua ca!"
After waiting and not seeing her son return, the mother would cry hysterically every day. Knowing that her husband was the one that harmed her son, she would insult him to his face. The mother forced her husband to go find her son and not to come home until he did. Otherwise, if he did not show up with her son then she was going to take him to court.
The stepfather could do nothing except follow his wife's orders and into the woods he went. He searched and searched. All of a sudden in the silent forest, he heard a scream that kept saying, "Bat cat qua ca!" A chill went down his spine as the man heard the saying. It was as if the boy had come back to haunt him for his evil deed.
The continuous echoing scared him, making him ran aimlessly in the forest trying to get away from it. Everywhere he went the voice kept getting nearer and surrounding him. "Bat cat qua ca." Its echo kept haunting the stepfather, causing him to keep on running until he was drained and collapsed onto a rock. A few days later, a group of woodcutters found his body still lying on the edge of the woods.
Another sad story. I tried to make it lighter but it's the best I can do and it still came out depressing. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed it.

Good night.