The Farmer and the Bamboo & Other Stories

 

In a particular village, there was a farmer whose neighbours planted crops that could be harvested easily. But this farmer had great vision; he did not follow what his neighbours did. He cleared a plot of land that was seemingly unremarkable and pressed small seeds into the earth.

He hauled buckets of water from the stream every morning and enriched the soil every evening.

By the end of the first year, the man’s neighbours leaned over their fences. They had harvested grain, while this farmer had nothing.

The neighbours laughed at the farmer "Your field has nothing! You waste your strength on a patch of dust."

The farmer simply smiled and continued to water his land.

The second year came. The rains arrived, and the sun beat down. The farmer continued his ritual. The earth, however, remained flat and silent as before.

This happened even in the third year.

By the fourth year, the farmer’s own family began to doubt him.

His son came forward, "Father, this land is barren. Please, let us plant some other grain."

But the farmer looked at the ground and did not do so.

Then came the fifth year. In the middle of the fifth month, a tiny green spike, no longer than a finger, came out of the crust of the earth.

Then another, and another.

What happened next was a legend.

This was the bamboo. Once the bamboo broke the surface, it began to grow at a terrifying speed. It did not grow by inches, but by feet.

In just six weeks, the bamboo soared to eighty feet into the air.

The villagers were in awe, "This is a miracle! Eighty feet in six weeks?"

But the farmer shook his head. "This did not grow eighty feet in six weeks; it grew eighty feet in five years. If I had stopped watering for a single day during those four years of silence, the root would have withered, and this would never have happened."

There is a story of a young boy. This boy was known as the dullard of his school.

His classmates could understand and compose poetry easily, but this boy stumbled over basic language syntax. He just could not understand it.

Finally, after failing another exam, the boy packed his belongings and walked away from the Academy.

He walked for days and finally reached the banks of a river.

There, he saw an old woman holding a thick, jagged iron bar, rubbing it against a large, smooth river stone.

Curious, the boy came forward. "Mother, what are you doing?"

"I am making a needle," the old woman told him.

The boy gasped. "A needle? From this heavy bar? This would take a hundred years!"

The old woman did not stop.

She looked at the river, and then at the boy. "Look at the river waters. The water is very soft, and still, it has hollowed out the granite cliff over ten thousand years.” The woman pointed at the bar in her hands. “Now the stone is hard, but I am constant. Every day, the bar loses a layer of its rough skin. Every day, it will come closer to becoming a needle. The only way I can fail is if I stop."

The little boy looked at the river stone and the old woman and said nothing else.

He returned to his academy. He did not compete with the geniuses of his Academy.

Instead, like the farmer, he spent years mastering a single rule of grammar, then another.

Eventually, this little boy grew up to become a great grammarian. He wrote the definitive codex on the structure of the language, a work so precise it was used even centuries later.

There was no secret. As the grammarian would tell people, "Most people fail not because they lack talent, but because they lack consistency."

Adapted from Folklore Around the World

The Crow and the Cobra

 

Deep within a lush forest, a happy pair of crows made their home in the branches of a banyan tree. Their lives were peaceful, save for one terrifying large black cobra that lived in a hollow at the foot of the very same tree.

Every time the crows laid their eggs, the cobra would slither up the trunk and eat the eggs. 

The crows knew they were physically no match for the venomous snake and were grief-stricken and felt helpless.

Desperate for a solution, they turned to a trusted friend - a wise old jackal.

The jackal patiently listened to the crows and smiled. 

"Do not be afraid," the jackal said calmly. "Strength is not the only way to win. You cannot use your own strength here, but you can borrow the strength of another to solve your problem."

The jackal then told the crows what to do.

The next morning, the crow took flight and headed toward the nearby royal palace. 

Down by the riverbank, the queen and her ladies-in-waiting were bathing in the cool waters. 

Before stepping into the river, they had left their expensive jewelry on the banks, under the watchful eyes of the royal guards.

With perfect timing, the crow swooped down, scooped up a heavy, shimmering gold necklace belonging to the queen, and flew off.

"Stop that thief!" The guards shouted running after the crow.

The crow deliberately flew slowly, making sure he stayed well within sight of the royal guards. 

The royal guards tracked the crow as it flew straight back to the banyan tree.

As the guards came to the banyan tree, the crow hovered over the hollow at the base of the tree and dropped the glittering gold necklace right inside.

The guards rushed to the tree and peered into the dark hollow to retrieve the queen's necklace. 

But as they looked closer, they saw the black cobra coiled tightly around the gold. 

Fearing for their lives and to protect the royal treasure, the guards immediately killed the cobra with their spears.

The guards safely recovered the necklace and returned to the palace. 

From that day forward, the crows lived in peace with their nest safe from any threats.

The Story of the Three Dogs - Part One

 

There was once a king who went to another land and there the king married the queen of that land. They both ruled the kingdom and in due course of time, they had a daughter. 

There was joy all over the kingdom as they celebrated the birth of the princess.

However, at that time, a fortune teller came to the kingdom. The fortune teller looked odd, but no one knew where she had come from.

However the fortune teller had something very dangerous to say. “Until fifteen winters were not over, the royal princess is not to be taken into the open air. If this was not followed, the mountain ogres would take away the princess.”

The king heard the words of the fortune teller and the king immediately felt fearful for his daughter. 

The king immediately appointed a guard to look over his daughter and the guard's work was to make sure that the princess never set foot in open air.

After some time the queen had another daughter.

Though this time too, the entire kingdom rejoiced at the birth of the second princess, the fortune teller came back and the fortune teller predicted the same trouble for the second royal child as well.

The same thing happened when the queen gave birth to the third princess.

On hearing the words of the fortune teller, the king became afraid because he loved his three daughters more than anything else.

The king issued stern orders that the three princesses would always be kept within doors.

The king's orders were followed and a few years had passed in this way. The three princesses grew up to be beautiful maidens but they never ventured out in the open air.

Adapted from Swedish Fairy Tales

The Deaf Frog

Long ago there was a well that was a towering cylinder of slick stone. On the top of the well there was a jagged rim that seemed to touch the clouds. For the colony of frogs living in the damp darkness at the bottom, the rim was the ‘Great Beyond’ - and that was a place of sunlight and dragonflies that many spoke of. 

But none of the frogs of the well had seen it. 

One day, a group of young frogs decided they had spent enough of their lives in the shadows. 

They announced a competition - the first frog to reach the top of the well would be crowned as the King of the Marshlands.

A massive crowd of frogs gathered at the base to watch. 

As the competitors took their first leaps onto the slippery walls, the crowd realized the problem.

"It’s too high," croaked a frog, shaking his head. "Look at the slime on the stones."

“It is not doable.” Another frog agreed. 

"They don’t have the strength.”

As the climb began, the frogs leaped with fervor. But the walls were slippery. For every few inches of progress the frogs were met with a slip. 

One by one, the competing frogs began to tire.

The crowd’s voices grew louder as every frog gave up. 

"Give up!" 

"You will hurt yourselves!” 

Under the weight of these words, the frogs began to falter. 

One frog, hearing the cries of his friends, looked down and lost his footing. He tumbled back into the mud. 

Another frog listened to the warnings about the heat of the sun at the top. He grew fearful and stopped midway.

Soon, only two frogs remained. One was a large, muscular bullfrog and the other was a tiny, unassuming green frog with bright, inquisitive eyes.

The crowd intensified their shouting. "Save yourselves!"

The bullfrog, hearing the logic in their screams felt the burn in his muscles, 

He looked at the stone walls and let go. He fell through the air, landing with a heavy splash in the pool below.

But the tiny frog? 

The tiny frog kept jumping.

He did not look down. He did not even look at the crowd. Every time he slipped, he simply found a new grip. 

When the crowd yelled, ‘You'll never make it!’ he seemed to jump with even more vigor. 

When they screamed, ‘It’s too dangerous!’ he climbed faster.

The onlookers were baffled. Was the little frog mocking them? 

Finally, with one last leap, the tiny frog’s feet hooked over the rim of the well. He pulled himself up into the blinding gold of the afternoon sun. 

He had found the light.

Hours later, after the tiny frog had explored the wonders of the upper world, he hopped back down to the well’s edge to see his friends.

When he eventually returned to the bottom, the colony crowded around him and they looked at him with awe.

"How did you do it?"

"How did you find the strength when everyone told you it couldn't be done?"

The tiny frog did not say a word.

It was then that the little frog’s mother stepped forward "My son cannot hear you. He has been deaf since the day he was spawned."

The realization hit the colony like a physical blow. 

The little frog had not been brave. He had simply been unable to hear their doubt. 

Every time they had screamed that he would fail, he thought they were cheering him on. He had interpreted their waving as gestures of encouragement.

That was how he had managed to reach the top.

-From Folklore from around the World

Audio Story on YouTube

The Story of a Man who became a Serpent - Part Two

 

The man looked at himself and he was horror struck because he had turned into a serpent. The man did not realise how he had turned into a serpent. 

Dejected, he crawled back through the cave and lay down at the foot of a huge pine tree.

There, the man fell asleep and he had a dream. 

In his dream a woman appeared and the woman looked kindly at him. “ I am the spirit of the pine tree. You have turned into a serpent because you have eaten the fruit of Fengtu.” 

The man was anguished because Fengtu was Hades.

The woman continued in the man's dream. “However, I shall give you a way out. If you climb to the topmost branches of this pine tree and throw yourself down on earth, you will return to who you originally were.”

The man woke up from his dream and realised that he had to follow the advice of the woman and the hunter was determined to follow the advice because he decided that it was better to be smashed into pieces because of the fall from the pine tree, than remain as a serpent.

The man did as he was told.

Luckily for the man, as soon as he followed the advice, he turned into his own self.

After that the hunter set up an inao which is an offering beneath the pine tree 

Adapted from Japanese Folklore