The Camel and the Jackal: The Indian Folk Tale Retold for Bedtime
Quick answer: The Camel and the Jackal retold for bedtime: a jackal howls after dinner and gets his friend beaten, so the camel rolls in the river on the way home. A Deccan tale.
A jackal talks a camel into carrying him across a river to a field of sugarcane, eats his fill in five minutes, and then, bored, starts to howl. The camel gets the beating. The way home is the rest of the tale, and it is the best short lesson in fair return that a child can hear.
The story
A camel and a jackal were friends. One day the jackal said, “On the far side of the river there is a field of sugarcane, and beside it a bank full of crabs and fish. Carry me across, and we shall both dine.” The camel swam over with the jackal on his back.
The camel went into the sugarcane and the jackal along the bank. A jackal's dinner is small; long before the camel had eaten his fill, the jackal was finished, and bored, and he began to run round the field yelping and howling. The farmers heard, came running with sticks, and drove the camel out of their cane with a good beating.
“Was that friendly?” said the camel as they went down to the river. “Oh,” said the jackal, “I always sing a little after dinner. It is my habit.” “Is it,” said the camel. “Climb on.” The jackal climbed on, and the camel walked into the river.
In the middle, where the water was deep, the camel stopped. “I feel a strong wish to roll,” he said. “Roll? You cannot roll here. I shall drown.” “I always roll a little after dinner,” said the camel. “It is my habit.” And he rolled. The jackal came up spluttering, swam the rest of the way with his tail dripping, and never played that trick again. Tit for tat, the old people say, and leave it there.
Where it comes from
The tale is from the Deccan, recorded by Mary Frere in Old Deccan Days in 1868 under the title Tit for Tat. Camel-and-jackal stories are told across India and the Middle East, and the jackal is the usual trickster of Indian animal tales, as the fox is in Europe.
What the tale is about underneath
The camel never loses his temper and never accuses the jackal of anything. He answers the excuse with the same excuse, word for word, and lets the river do the talking. The tale is about proportion: the jackal's trick cost the camel a beating, and the camel's costs the jackal a wetting, no more. Children feel the fairness of the match exactly, and they enjoy the camel's calm more than they would enjoy his anger.
Reading aloud
Give the jackal a quick, wheedling voice and the camel a slow one that never changes.
Write your own
Borrow the mirrored excuse. Let one character hurt another and explain it away with a line about habit, then let the wronged one repeat that line back at the moment of return. The craft is in keeping the return smaller than the offence, so that the reader feels justice rather than revenge. Say nothing more after the splash.
What writers can take from this
- Make the sugarcane tall and the crabs quick, so the two dinners are clearly different lengths.
- Let the howling be ridiculous; the jackal is bored, not wicked.
- Keep the camel polite. His only sharp line is “Is it.”
- Repeat “It is my habit” in exactly the same words.
- Stop at the splash. The tale needs no lesson spoken.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which one friend's careless pleasure gets the other punished, and the careless one excuses it as a habit. On the way home, let the wronged friend announce a habit of their own, in the same words, and let the return be smaller than the harm.
Questions
What is the moral of The Camel and the Jackal?
What you do to others may be done back to you, in the same measure. The tale's title in its first English printing was Tit for Tat, and the camel's careful proportion, a wetting for a beating, is the point.
Is The Camel and the Jackal suitable for a 3-year-old?
Yes. The farmers' beating is one sentence, the jackal is only dunked, and the repeated excuse is easy for a small child to catch and enjoy. It is one of the shortest Indian animal tales.
Where does The Camel and the Jackal come from?
It is a Deccan folk tale, recorded in English by Mary Frere in Old Deccan Days in 1868 as Tit for Tat, from the telling of her ayah Anna Liberata de Souza. Camel-and-jackal tales are told across India and beyond.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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