and when
the basket of rice was produced, she told them where the palm tree was,
in which Kora's sister was hiding. In all haste the father and mother
went to the tree and found that it was much too high for them to climb:
so they begged their daughter to come down and promised not to marry
her to her brother; but she would not come down: then they sang:--

"You have made a palm tree from the scrapings of your skin
And have climbed up into it, daughter!
Come daughter, come down."

But she only answered:--

"Father and mother, why do you cry?
I must spend my life here:
"Do you return home."

So they went home in despair.

Then her sisters-in-law came in their turn and sang:--

"Palm tree, palm tree, give us back our sister:
The brother and sister have got to be married."

But she would not answer them nor come down from the tree, so they
had to go home without her.

Then all her other relations came and besought her to come down,
but she would not listen to them. So they went away and invoked a
storm to come to their aid. And a storm arose and cold rain fell,
till the girl in the palm tree was soaked and shivering, and the
wind blew and swayed the palm tree so that its top kept touching the
ground. At last she could bear the cold and wet no more and, seizing
an opportunity when the tree touched the ground, she slipped off. Her
relations had made all the villagers promise on no account to let
her into their houses; so when she went into the village and called
out at house after house no one answered her or opened to her. Then
she went to her own home and there also they refused to open to her.

But Kora had lit a big fire in the cow house and sat by it warming
himself, knowing that the girl would have to come to him; and as she
could find no shelter elsewhere she had to go to his fire, and then
she sat and warmed herself and thought "I fled for fear of this man
and now I have come back to him; this is the end, I can no longer stay
in this world; the people will not even let me into their houses. I
have no wish to see them again."

So she sat and thought, and when she was warmed, she lay down by
the side of Kora; and he wore tied to his waist a nail-cutter; she
unfastened this and cut her throat with it as she lay. Her death
struggles aroused Kora, and he got up and saw the ground covered with
her blood and he saw that she had killed herself with his nail-cutter