Tales of a Korean Grandmother Page 12

  "Well, this priest knew the story of the King's Seventh Daughter. He feared that her angry father might harm the poor child if it were known she had been saved. So he hid her in the temple. He fed her and clothed her and made her days happy.

  "'Who am I, Holy One?' the princess asked her protector when she was old enough to wonder about her mother and father.

  "'You are a daughter of the forest, my little one,' the kind priest replied. 'Your father was the Spirit of the Bamboo, and your mother dwelt in the Odong Tree.' So the girl always made her bows to the bamboo and the odong, just as though they were human.

  "As the years went by, the King's seventh daughter grew up safe and sound there in the temple. She did not learn the truth about her royal birth until one day a mudang came to seek out the priest.

  "'The good Queen is ill,' this mudang said. 'She is very ill. And she will die unless her lost daughter is found. I believe you can help me bring her to the Queen's chamber.'

  "How that mudang knew where the girl had been hidden, I cannot say, but then those spirit doctors know most of the secrets of the universe.

  Yong Tu missed his good games out in the courtyard. He was just learning to kick the shuttlecock with the side of his foot.

  "The King will be angry that his command to kill his seventh daughter was not obeyed. She will be in great danger,' the good priest objected.

  "'Neither the girl nor her protector need have any fears,' the mudang declared, it is the King himself who seeks the lost one to save his wife's life.'

  "Indeed, there was only rejoicing when the King's seventh daughter appeared at the court. And the Queen did not die. But neither did she grow strong and well.

  "'There is a certain medicine in faraway India,' the mudang said to the King. 'Only one of the Queen's daughters can get it for her, and only when that has been done, will the evil spirits depart at last from her royal body.'

  "Now India lies far beyond the broad plains and the high mountains of China. There were ten thousand chances against a traveler's safely going there and safely returning. The six older daughters all flatly refused to attempt the perilous journey. But the good seventh daughter, who had been reared by the priest, consented to go.

  "Over the broad plains, across the deep rivers, and beyond the high mountains she traveled to seek the good medicine for her mother. Then over the high mountains, across the deep rivers, and across the broad plains she journeyed back again. Two long years it took her, but at last the medicine was brought and the good Queen was cured.

  "'How wise was the mudang!' all the courtiers cried. 'Had she not found the King's seventh daughter for us, our good Queen would have died.'

  "'How good is the King's seventh daughter!' the mu-dangs said among themselves. 'Had she not taken her long and dangerous journey to bring back the medicine, our cure would not have worked.' That is why the mudangs made the King's seventh daughter their own guardian spirit. Even today, my treasures, they call on her name in their songs that drive out the demons."

  "But Halmoni," Ok Cha asked, "how could the King's seventh daughter ever have believed that her father was a bamboo and her mother an odong tree?"

  "Why should her parents not have been spirits, Jade Child? And why not spirits that lived in the bamboo and the odong tree? Even today when a man mourns his dead father, he always carries a staff made of bamboo. When it is his mother who has ridden the dragon to the Distant Shore, he uses a staff made of odong wood. These customs our men follow may well have come down to us from this very same tale of the King's seventh daughter."

  THE

  WOODCUTTER

  AND THE

  OLD MEN

  OF THE

  MOUNTAIN

  ONE summer evening after the eating tables had been carried away, Yong Tu sat on his grandmother's veranda with downcast face.

  "What troubles my young paksa?" Halmoni asked kindly.

  "I have been foolish, Halmoni," the boy replied. "I did not study today the pages of wisdom my father had set for me. Now he will not take me with him tomorrow when he goes to the country to look at the rice fields."

  "And where were you, Dragon Head, when you should have been repeating wise words in the Hall of Perfect Learning?"

  "The men in the Outer Court were playing a good game of changki," the boy said, his eyes brightening. He still remembered how interested he had been in watching this popular Korean game of chess.

  "Yé, that's how it always is." Halmoni nodded her head. "While the old men play changki, the ax handle rots."

  "What does that saying mean, Halmoni?" Yong Tu looked up, forgetting for the moment his disappointment about tomorrow's lost pleasure.

  "Ai, blessed boy, the evening dark comes, but perhaps there is time for that story before you spread out your sleeping mat.

  "The tale is about a woodcutter who might well have been called Min. He lived in the days before the trees on the mountain sides all were cut down. It would have been pleasant indeed under the grass roof of Min's little house, had it not been that his wife had such a bad temper. All the day long she scolded him. Even above the rat-a-tat-tat of her ironing sticks, her fretful voice could be heard.

  "Who can blame that woodcutter for being glad to get away from such a shrew of a wife? He often sang as he trudged up the wooded mountain side beyond his village. His jiggy was easier far on his back than the blows his wife gave him with her ironing sticks.

  "Like everyone else, Min often made a poem to honor the pleasures of a walk in the country. On this day he loudly sang this foolish song:

  'Ho, the strong jiggy

  Rests light on my back.

  Of branches and twigs,

  For my stove there's no lack.

  'I'll pile them on high,

  Then pile on some more,

  Until I've enough

  To still my she-tiger's roar.'

  "There on that mountain side it was as quiet and peaceful as inside a temple. And because the sun was so bright and the sky was so blue, Min climbed higher and higher. He stopped now and then to bathe his face in the crystal water of a stream or to admire the wild flowers that grew amid the rocks.

  "Then he came upon a little clearing hidden among the trees, just the place for him to rest after his climb. But there were those there before him. In the shade of a tree sat four curiously dressed old men. On a flat stone between them they were playing a game of changki. No doubt they played it in just the same way, Yong Tu, as the men you watched in the Outer Court this morning.

  "With a polite cough of warning Min drew near the players. The old men looked up from their game and gave the newcomer greeting.

  "'Our visitor looks tired. No doubt he is thirsty,' the oldest one said. 'Give him a bowl of sool, boy,' he commanded the young servant who squatted near by. Min sat down beside the Ancient Ones, drinking the good wine and watching their game.

  "The Old, Old Ones played slowly. They studied each move, and their wrinkled old hands crept back and forth over their chessmen, like snails on the ground. In the soft warm air Min grew drowsy. As he watched the game, his head nodded. Perhaps he even slept, for his head would lift with a jerk, when a player cried, 'Chang,' as he made a checkmate.

  "At last Min opened his eyes to see that the sun was low in the sky. 'The she-tiger in my house will be angry if I tarry here longer,' he said to himself, and he started to rise up from the ground. What could have happened to him? His joints were aching and stiff. He could scarcely get onto his feet. And when he looked down at his clothes, he found they were ragged and tattered. What was this white hair that fell from his chin? His beard and his hair were as snowy as those of the four ancient changki players. And where were they now? There was no sight nor sound of them.

  "'Those Old Ones must have been Mountain Spirits,' Min cried aloud. 'They have put their spell on me. They have taken away my good clothes and left me only these rags. They have stolen my ax. In its place they have put this crumbling stick of old wood and this rusty bit of iron.
Even my jiggy frame has turned into dust, eaten up by the worms. Ai-go! Ai-go!' Min wailed. 'What will my wife say?'

  "With tottering steps the poor woodcutter made his way down the mountain. As he drew near his village, his wonder grew even greater.

  "'The village did not look like this when I went up the hillside this morning,' he said to himself. 'No such house as this one stood out here on the edge of the rice fields. My old friend Cho had no new grass roof on his house. Who are all these new people gathered about the foodseller's shop?'

  "There was even a strange dog in the gate hole of Min's own courtyard. 'Whom do you seek, Old Man?' asked a passing youth, who forgot his politeness at the sight of the woodcutter's tatters and rags.

  "'I seek the house of Min, the woodcutter. Is this not it?'

  "'Yé, this was the house of Min, but he has been dead these thirty years. His son lives here now, but he is out on the rice fields.'

  "'And where is Min, the woodcutter?' the poor fellow asked.

  "'That was a sad thing, Grandfather,' the boy replied, it happened long before I was born, but they say he went out on the mountain to get brushwood, and he never came back. Perhaps a tiger ate him up. Or perhaps the spirits carried him off for cutting wood from a grave site.'

  "'But I myself am Min, the woodcutter, and this is my house,' the old man cried to the crowd that had gathered about. The people looked at one another in amazement and fright.

  "Does a man ever return from the Distant Shore? Does he come out of his grave mound to live again?' they shouted. They began to curse Min. They shook their fists in his face. Then they ran away.

  "Tears rolled down the wrinkled cheeks of the old woodcutter, for old he now was, as old as the ancient men of the mountain who had played changki under the tree in the glen.

  "Just then there came toward the gate a very old woman. Her hair, too, was white. Her face had ten thousand wrinkles. And she carried a pair of ironing sticks in her hand.

  "'Can you tell me where I can find the wife of Min, the woodcutter?' the bewildered man asked politely. He was afraid to say again that he was Min. This old woman, too, might curse him for a demon. But the old woman only stared at him for a moment. Then she began to berate him.

  "I know you well, Old Man, even after these thirty years. You are Min, himself, and I am your wife. How could you leave me all this time to work my hands to the bone to feed our young son? You worthless fellow, I'll teach you to go away like that again.' She seized the old man by his white topknot and began to belabor him on the shoulders with the ironing sticks.

  "'Hué, this is good!' Min said, dodging her blows. 'Now indeed I am home again. Here is at least one who has neither changed nor forgotten me.'

  "That, Dragon Head, is the story, from which we get the wise saying, 'While the old men play changki, the ax handle rots.' What does the saying mean? It means that if a boy spends too much time upon games, he does not get his lessons learned. Then he does not go on the good journey with his father tomorrow."

  THE

  GOOD

  BROTHER'S

  REWARD

  ANOTHER family had come to join the throng which crowded the houses inside the Kim courts. Another brother of the Master had fallen into bad luck and had brought his wife and his many children to seek the shelter of these tiled roofs.

  "Why do they come to live with us, Halmoni?" Yong Tu asked his grandmother. "Why didn't they stay in their own house?" The boy was not sure he liked having his cousins there. They wanted to spin his tops and fly his kites. They were so many that Ok Cha seldom had a turn now on the swing in the Inner Court.

  "Bad luck sought them out, blessed boy," the old woman explained. "Where should they come but to their wealthy brother? And how should he do otherwise than make them welcome? Our gates are always open to receive guests. Even a stranger is here offered a table of food. How then should a brother be turned away?

  "And if this custom is broken, my young dragon, disaster surely would follow. Have I ever told you the tale of the two brothers, the good brother and the greedy brother, and how each one was rewarded? No? Then sit down here beside me, and listen well.

  "Once long ago there were two brothers, one rich and one, like your uncle, who had fallen into the hands of misfortune. When their father had mounted the dragon and ridden away to the Distant Shore, the oldest son took all the family wealth for himself. Instead of filling his father's place as head of the house and looking after his younger brother, he put him out of the gate to seek shelter and food and clothes for his family wherever he might.

  "To give these brothers names, we might call the elder greedy one Koh Sang Chip. The younger one might well have been named Koh Sang Hun. In the fine Koh family houses, Sang Chip lived alone with only his wife. No children had been sent to bless his selfish days. Sang Hun, on the other hand, dwelt with his wife and several sons in a little mud hut. Its ancient grass roof had such great holes in it that the rain fell through upon that family as if direct from the sky. At night those poor young people slept upon their tattered straw mats on a cold earthen floor. It was only by lying, huddled together, that they could keep warm.

  "By weaving straw shoes and by doing whatever jobs he could find, Sang Hun barely managed to keep his little family alive. But often and often his children cried out for food. Even the rats complained to their neighbors that there was not one grain of rice in that house for the stealing.

  "'Send our youngest son to ask help from your rich brother,' Sang Hun's wife said one day to her unhappy husband. 'Surely when he sees that small boy's hungry look, he will give us a little from his great store of food.'

  "But that greedy rich brother turned the boy away from his gate. 'I have food enough only for my own household,' he said roughly. 'My rice and my bean flour both are locked up tight in the storehouse. My bran I shall keep for my own cows. What extra grain there might be must go to my chickens. If I give you scraps from our table, my dogs will be angry. Go before they attack you!'

  "When the little boy returned home, he was ashamed to repeat the cruel words his uncle had spoken. He only said, i have brought nothing. My uncle was not at home!'

  "'Well,' said his mother, i will sell these shoes off my feet. Their straw soles are still good. They will bring enough cash for a little rice for our supper.'

  "But that night luck found its way to the good brother again. Sang Hun brought home a rich treasure from his day of gathering wood out on the mountain side. This treasure was a root of the medicine plant called insam (ginseng). Even the King and the Queen drank insam soup in the spring. The medicine sellers paid Sang Hun much money for the insam root. His wife's shoes could now be bought back. Together with her husband she could again go forth to seek work.

  "Sang Hun's wife found a place among women winnowing rice, and the man acted as a porter with his wooden jiggy frame on his back, carrying loads for the rich folk of the village. And so they got through the winter.

  "Spring came, and the swallows flew back from the south to build their nests under the straw eaves of Sang Hun's little house. Soon there were baby birds in those nests. One day while Sang Hun was weaving sandals out in his courtyard, he saw a great roof snake glide out from the straw eaves towards the little birds. Before the man could drive the snake away, it had gobbled up all but one of the young swallows. That one had fallen out of the nest and struck the hard ground. When the man picked it up, he saw that one of its wee legs was badly broken.

  "Gently big-hearted Sang Hun bound up the swallow's leg with splints made of dried fishskin. The children fed the bird and nursed it until it could hop about once again. Its wee leg was crooked, but it seemed strong enough and it began to fly about, chirping with joy.

  "When the days began to grow short and the autumn nights began to grow chill, the little bird with the crooked leg hopped once more across Sang Hun's courtyard. It was chirping and chirping as if saying good-by before it flew off to the south.

  "The next Spring the swallow with the cro
oked leg came again. It lit upon Sang Hun's hand, and into his palm it dropped a curious seed. On one side of the seed the man's name was written in golden brush strokes. On the other side were the words Plant me! Water me!

  "This little bird with the crooked leg could not talk, but my grandmother always told me the seed was sent to Sang Hun by the King of the Birds. It was a reward for his kindness in saving the baby swallow from the roof snake and for healing its broken leg.

  Ok Cha seldom had a turn now on the swing in the Inner Court.

  "Well, that seed sprouted and grew. Its plant climbed high up to the grass roof of that little house, and three enormous gourds hung upon its thick vine. About the middle of the Ninth Moon the man said to his wife, 'We shall cut the gourds down today. We can eat their soft pulp and we can make water bowls out of their hard shells.'

  "When Sang Hun sawed the first gourd open, the couple saw a strange sight. Two menservants stepped out of it. They carried a fine table laden with silver bowls and bottles of wine. 'This bottle contains wine that gives men long life,' the spirit servants said to Sang Hun. 'This bottle has wine which makes the blind see. And this one will bring back speech to a dumb man.'

  "The man and his family were silent with wonder as they sawed open the second gourd. At once their courtyard was filled with shining chests, with rich silks and rolls of shining grass linen. When the third gourd was opened, there came forth an army of carpenters with tools and strong pieces of excellent wood. Before the bewildered man's eyes there rose from his ground houses with tiled roofs, stables for horses, and storehouses for grain. Into his gates came a long train of bullocks, loaded with furniture, and with rice and other good food to fill his storage jars to the brim. Servants and horses and everything that a rich man's house holds came to Sang Hun out of these three magic gourds.