The king carrying the goblin (source)
Introduction
Every day, a monk brought the king a piece of fruit, which
he in turn gives to his treasurer. After 12 years, the king gives one of his
daily fruits to a monkey. The monkey splits the fruit open and a gemstone falls
out. The king, amazed, asks the treasurer what he did with the other fruits.
The treasurer goes and checks under the window that he had been throwing the
fruits out of, and reports back that he saw a pile of priceless stones.
The next day, the king asks the monk why he keeps giving him
expensive gemstones. The monk asks the king for help in a matter, and tells the
king to meet him under a fig tree in the cemetery. The king meets him at the
agreed upon place, and the monk tells him to go retrieve a dead body from a
tree. He find the body, and cuts it loose from the rope it hangs from. The body
laughs; the king recognizes that there is a goblin living in it, and, as he
carries the body back toward the monk, the goblin tells him a story:
The Three Lovers
A Brahman lived on the bank of a river with his daughter.
Three young men ask to marry her. She doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of any
of them, so she puts off making a choice. She waits so long that she dies, and
the three young men take her to the cemetery and have a funeral. One builds a
hut and sleeps on her ashes; the second takes her bones to the sacred river;
and the third becomes a travelling monk.
The monk goes to a man’s house. As they are eating dinner,
the man’s infant son makes a scene, and his mother throws him into the fire.
The monk declares that he is in the house of the devil, but the man does a spell
and the boy stands back up, alive and well. When the man and his family are
sleeping, the monk steals his spellbook, with the goal of bringing the young
woman back to life.
The monk goes back to the cemetery and gathers the other
young men. The perform the spell, and the young woman comes back to life, even
more beautiful than before. All three claim that she belings to him and him
alone- the first because he kept her ashes safe, the second because he put her
bones in the holy river, and the third because he did the spell.
The goblin asks the king who should get to marry the young woman.
The king says that the third young man did what a father should, and the second
did what a son should do, but the first, who slept with the ashes, did what a
lover should do, and therefore he should marry her. The goblin, satisfied,
disappears back to the tree. The king goes back, cuts him down again, and
starts the walk again, and the goblin tells him another story:
The Brave Man, the Wise Man, and the Clever Man
The daughter of a king’s adviser says she will marry a
brave, wise, or clever man. Her father gets sent to a far away land, and a
young man, having heard of his daughter’s declaration, approaches him about marrying
her. He says he is a clever man, and proves it by building a magic chariot, and
the father agrees to the marriage.
Another young man approaches the girl’s brother, claiming to
be a brave man. He proves his skill with weapons, and the brother agrees to let
him marry his sister.
A third young man approaches the girl’s mother, claiming to
be a wise man. He tells her truths of the past and future, and she agrees to
allow him to marry her daughter.
The father and brother arrive home, and they discover that
the daughter has three marriages planned on the same day. When the grooms
arrive, they discover that the girl has been kidnapped by a giant (according to
the wise man). The clever man builds another chariot, and the three men bring
the father with them to find the giant. The brave man kills the giant, and they
rescue the daughter. The three young men start arguing about who deserves to
marry her, each claiming that she would be lost without their skills.
The goblin again asks the king who the girl should marry.
The king says she should marry the brave man, because he risked his life, and
the other two were just his helpers. The goblin, once again satisfied, escapes
back to the tree again. The king gets the goblin again, and the goblin tells a
third story:
The Woman, her Husband, and her Brother
A man meets a beautiful woman and falls in love. His father
promises that they will be able to wed, and the woman’s father agreed. After
they were wed, her brother comes to visit, and invites the couple to a party.
They walk to the party, and find a temple on the way. The man decides to
sacrifice himself to the goddess of the temple; his brother-in-law is driven
mad with grief and cuts off his own head. The woman find them dead, and is about
to kill herself when the goddess tells her not to die, but that she should
place the heads back on the bodies and bring them back to life. She does so, but
accidentally mixes up the heads, not realizing until after they come back to
life.
The goblin asks the king which man is now the husband and
which man is now the brother. The king replies that the man with the husband’s
head and the brother’s body is the husband, because heads are how you recognize
people. The goblin is again satisfied, and yet again disappears back to the
tree. The king starts getting fed up, and goes back once again. The goblin
starts another story:
Food, Women, Cotton
A man sends his three adult sons to find a sacrificial
turtle. The eldest son refuses to carry the turtle, saying it is slimy and trying
to shame his younger brothers into carrying it. The brothers start arguing
about who is a more important specialist. The eldest says he is a specialist in
food; the middle, a specialist in women. They try to get the youngest to carry
the turtle, but he refutes it by saying he is a specialist in cotton.
They go to a king to settle the quarrel. The king gives them
a lavish meal, which the eldest brother refuses to eat because he smells a
corpse in it. The rice was grown near a crematory.
The king then sends a woman to the second brother’s room. He
rejects her, saying she smells goaty. She was, in fact, raised on goat milk.
The king gives the third brother a lovely couch to sleep on.
He wakes up in the middle of the night and says something is under the quilts.
The attendants find a single hair under one of the many quilts.
The king gives each man 100,000 gold pieces, and they stay
at the palace, forgetting about the turtle and the sacrifice.
The goblin asks the king which man was the most clever. The king
says that the third brother is the most clever, as the other brothers could
have asked around for their knowledge. And once again, the goblin goes back to
the tree. The king retrieves him again, and he tells another story:
The Four Scientific Suitors
A king prays that he and his wife might have children. He is
told that he will have a brave son and a beautiful daughter. When the children
have bene born and are adults, the kings sends for suitors for his daughter. Finding
none satisfactory, he offers to call upon kings; the daughter instead requests
that he find an attractive scientist for her to marry.
Four young men hear of the offer, and make their way to the
palace. One is a suit maker, who makes five suits a day. One is a farmer, who
knows the languages of all animals. One is a soldier, who is an expert
swordsman. The final one is a necromancer. All are attractive, and the king and
his daughter have difficulty choosing.
The goblin asks the king which man the girl should marry,
and he chooses the soldier, because he is of the proper class and has manhood.
The goblin disappears again, and the king goes back and gets him again. The
goblin tells another story:
The Three Delicate Wives
A king has three wives. The first passes out when he
playfully tugs on her hair; the second gets a moonburn, and the third is
bruised by noise.
The goblin asks which wife is the most delicate. The king
says the one who is bruised by sound, as nothing touched her. The goblin
returns to the tree.
No comments:
Post a Comment