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Updated: July 13, 2025
There are all kinds of Nats, good and bad, great and little, male and female, now living round about us. Some of them live in the trees, especially in the huge figtree that shades half-an-acre without the village; or among the fern-like fronds of the tamarind." The Golden Bough, iv, 339. Though the sap is said to contain caoutchouc. The Soul of a People, by H. Fielding , p. 250.
How long exactly no one can say, but not so long that the details of the story have become at all clouded by the mists of time. They were brother and sister, these Popa Nats, and they had lived away up North. The brother was a blacksmith, and he was a very strong man.
Flowers will be offered sometimes, and a little water or rice maybe, to the Nat, never supposing that he is in need of such things, but as a courteous and graceful thing to do; for it is not safe to offend these Nats, and many of them are very powerful.
I have already mentioned the creaking of the cart-wheels which no Burman would oil, for they believe that the horrible groanings they produce, together with their own loud voices, serve to ward off the evil spirits of the woods; for the Burman is superstitious, and at frequent intervals may be seen tiny wicker-work representations of pagodas and "zeyats" erected to propitiate the forest "nats," and passers-by will deposit in these diminutive shrines some offering of food or ornament, and in the Shan States I remember seeing one whose enclosing fence was hung with spears and "dahs," and other weapons of considerable interest and some value.
I asked the official who was with me, a fine handsome Burman who had been with us in many fights, whether he would go into the wood with me, but he declined at once. Enemies are one thing, Nats are quite another, and a very much more dreadful thing.
But to him who has never felt this life, who has never been wooed by the trees and hills, these things are but foolishness, of course. To the Burman, not less than to the Greek of long ago, all nature is alive. The forest and the river and the mountains are full of spirits, whom the Burmans call Nats.
Nay, it was even said that men had been struck by unseen hands and severely hurt, and others, it was said, had disappeared. Children who went to play under the tree were never seen again: the Nats took them, and their parents sought for them in vain. So the landing-place was deserted, and a petition was brought to the king, and the king gave orders that the tree should be hewn down.
Probably it was the denseness of its forests, the abundance of water, and its central position, more than its guardian Nats, that made it for so many years the last retreating-place of the half-robber, half-patriot bands that made life so uneasy for us. But the Nats of Popa Mountains are very famous.
To travellers sleeping beneath the tree at night it was stated that two Nats had appeared, very large and very beautiful, a man Nat and a woman Nat, and had frightened them very much indeed. Noises were heard in the tree, voices and cries, and a strange terror came upon those who approached it.
All that they want shall be given. And the Nats spake and said that they wanted a place to live in where they could be at peace, and the monk answered for the governor that all his land was at their disposal. 'Let the Nats choose, he said; 'all the country is before them. So the Nats chose, and said that they would have Popa Mountain, and the monk agreed.
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