A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

Overview

A beautiful woman offers a home to twelve sisters abandoned in the jungle, asking them to keep her young daughter company. She forbids them to enter a small garden, but they eventually discover that it is strewn with human bones and flee, recognizing her as a cannibal. The text describes her appearance as human and supplies no alternative monstrous body.

A cow and then an elephant shelter the sisters inside their mouths. Seeing the edge of one girl’s garment hanging from the elephant’s mouth, the pursuer knows its denial is false and curses its lip to hang like cloth forever. The tale ends by explaining the elephant’s drooping lip through that curse, without narrating either the sisters’ final destination or the cannibal’s death.

Beautiful woman whose curse marks an animal sheltering her fugitivesSource-specific historical narrative
01

Origins & earliest records

Historical Laos country within Siam, as identified by the collection

02

Records & interpretation

Complete relevant narrative and Willis G. Craig’s introduction directly read.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

  1. 01

    Laos Folk-Lore of Farther India

    Katherine Neville Fleeson, collector/translator · 1899

    II.2, Why the Lip of the Elephant Droops, pp. 29–32

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

Primary records and illustrations

Direct primary record

Katherine Neville Fleeson, Laos Folk-Lore of Farther India (Fleming H. Revell, 1899)

II.2, Why the Lip of the Elephant Droops. pp. 29–32

Complete narrative and any attached footnote read. Extraordinary anatomy and medicine are narrative elements; unnamed earlier temple book not inspected. No inferred ending beyond printed text.

Inspect the digitized plate · Source collection manifest

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

  1. Historical folktale collectionFleeson (1899), II.2, Why the Lip of the Elephant Droops, pp. 29–32Research access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

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