BATU BADAUN

Once, there lived a widow of a rich man in a village on Tanimbar island, Maluku. She had two children, who had already grown into a young man and a young woman they were both very mean and spoiled. They used to have sevants when their father was still alive, but the servants left after the man died. Now, it was their mother who took care of them and did all the house hold chores ,from coking the food to washing their clothes. The two children treated their mother like a slave.

One day the two lazy young people woke up late. there was no food served on the table, which was very unusual. instead, the food was still cooking on the stove .their mother was nowhere to be seen .the children got so angry that they smashed the cooking pots on floor .

They then went out look for their mother. they suspected that she was still washing their laundry and the dishes at the river near their house. True enough, they soon saw her scrubbing their dirty clothes on the river stones. They went to her, and while one of them held back her arms, the other started to beat her up viciously. The mother cried piteously and begged for mercy, but the two wicked children didn’t pay attention to her cries. They hit her again and again. The poor women kept on crying and struggling to free herself but it was in vain.

Suddenly she stopped crying and her body went limp. The children heard her say in a low voice, “your father left us a lot of riches, but it won’t last forever. Even though it was only I who brought you into this word, from now on you are no longer my children. You are the incarnation of the devil himself. I won’t go back to our home. Do whatever you want, I don care.”

After the said this, she dragged herself to a big boulder on the riverbank and said, “dear big stone, please open yourself. Let me come inside you. Let me become a white sweet smelling jasmine to prove and lay herself down. Slowly the stone closed over her.

After a few days a small beautiful plant started to grow from under the big stone. It grew and grew. It had plenty of leaves and its flowers were white and sweet smelling. The people from the surrounding villages called the big stone “Batu Badaun”.

And what became of the two wicked children? After the people found out what they had done, the angry villagers threw them out of the village. The riches were taken away and given to the poor and needy. The wicked children were never heard from again.