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The Wonderful Mine of Laplae

Bor Lek Nam Phee is the name of an actual mine in the Laplae District of Uttaradit Province, in Northern Thailand, but it’s also the place of origin of the legendary tale of the farmer who discovered the mine. This is that tale.

Long ago there were two brothers who were orphans. They were farmers, living and working the land at the edge of the forest. One day, the brothers had a chance meeting with the king in the forest. He was alone there, and lost. The brothers took him back to their simple house, acted as hosts to him and directed him as to the best road back to his court. Before leaving, the king told the brothers that they could gain audience with him any time they came to court.

As it turned out, the brothers had no occasion to leave their home, and didn’t take their ruler’s offer. However, one day, the elder brother saw a cow wandering into fields where it should not have been. He picked up what he thought was an ordinary rock, threw it at the cow to drive it off - and the cow dropped dead, its skull split by the missile he’d thrown. On examining the ‘rock’ the brothers realised that it was actually a metallic ore, and determined to smelt and smithy it into a sword to present to the king.

It was a weighty sword, and the elder brother carried it with difficulty to the court, to be welcomed by the king warmly, but have his gift refused. Deeply hurt and disappointed, the brother dragged the sword back to his dwelling place at the edge of the forest, unconscious of the destruction he was leaving in his wake.

The king had a deep cleft in the floor of the palace brought to his attention. A page told him it had been made by the farmer’s rejected sword. Now impressed by what he’d refused, the king ordered the royal pages to follow the trail of debris to the forest’s edge and bring the sword back to him.

It was too late, however. Slighted as he’d been by his ruler, the farmer had decided to throw the sword into a near-by pond, and there it remained. One page after another, one soldier and one courtier after another dived into the pond but met his death there, destroyed by the preternatural sharpness of the magic sword’s edge. Altogether three thousand persons met their end in the pond, which henceforth had the name wang sam pan - the ‘Three Thousand Pond’. But someone - the legend provides no name for this hero - succeeded. The king got his royal wish, and from then on used the sword as his personal weapon. He also ordered the elder brother to attend the court, there to work for him, but the farmer declined the invitation, prefering the life with his younger brother at the edge of the forest.

All the villagers who heard this story have called the elder farmer ‘jao phor lek nam phee’ or the mogul of the iron mine since then. At the entrance, the villagers have built a shrine for the spirit of the iron mine. Then when the villagers want to get the iron ore they have to propitiate the god of this mine so that they will have a smoothly-running operation from beginning to end.