Once upon a time, in a small village, lived ten cloth sellers who were best friends and always traveled together. One day, they went on a long trip to sell their beautiful fabrics and earned lots of money! As they headed back home, they had to pass through a thick, spooky forest. They didn’t know it, but three sneaky robbers lived in that forest!

Early one morning, as the friends were walking through the forest, the robbers jumped out with sticks and swords! They shouted at the cloth sellers to drop all their money. The cloth sellers didn’t have any weapons, so even though there were more of them, they were scared and had to listen. The robbers took everything – all the money and even their clothes! They only left them with tiny little cloths to cover themselves.

The robbers were so proud of themselves for tricking the ten friends and taking their stuff. They sat down like they were kings and told the cloth sellers to dance for them! The poor friends were so sad. They had lost everything except their tiny cloths, and now they had to dance too!

But one of the cloth sellers was very smart. He thought hard about their problem, the silly dance they had to do, and how the robbers were sitting like they owned the world. He also noticed that the robbers had put their weapons on the ground because they thought the friends were too scared to do anything. That’s when he had an idea! He started to sing a song while they danced. The song went like this:

“We are enty men, They are erith men: If each erith man, Surround eno men Eno man remains. Tâ, tai, tôm, tadingana.”

The robbers didn’t go to school, so they didn’t understand what the song meant. They just thought it was a normal dance song. But the smart cloth seller was using a secret code! He had sung the song a few times to let his friends understand. Cloth sellers often use secret codes when they talk about prices so other people can’t understand.

For example, if one cloth seller asks another, “What is the price of this cloth?”, the other might say, “Enty rupees.” That means “ten rupees,” but only other cloth sellers would know! In their secret code, “erith” meant “three,” “enty” meant “ten,” and “eno” meant “one.” So, the smart cloth seller was singing that they were ten friends, the robbers were only three, and if three friends jumped on each robber, nine of them could hold them down, while the last one tied them up!

The robbers were feeling really good and didn’t know what the song meant. They were chewing yummy tobacco and feeling like they were the best. But then, as the song finished, the cloth sellers split into groups of three and jumped on the robbers! The smart cloth seller grabbed the extra-large cloth he was wearing and tore it into strips. He quickly tied the robbers’ hands and feet! Now the robbers were trapped and rolled around on the ground like big bags of rice!

The ten friends took back all their money and the robbers’ weapons. When they got back to their village, they told everyone about their amazing adventure and how they outsmarted the robbers with a clever song!