Korean Fairy Tales

KOREAN FAIRY TALES
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
The tiger climbed up and out.
KOREAN FAIRY TALES
BY WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS Author of “Korea: Within and Without”; “Korea: The Hermit Nation” and of Japanese, Dutch, Belgian, Swiss and Welsh Fairy Tales
ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1911 and 1922 By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
Everywhere on earth the fairy world of each country is older and perhaps more enduring than the one we see and feel and tread upon. So I tell in this book the folk lore of the Korean people, and of the behavior of the particular kind of fairies that inhabit the Land of Morning Splendor. Yet, if I live long enough, I shall write the wonderful history of the Korean nation and civilization, which once so enriched Asia, and made possible the modern Japan such as we know today, of which fact the literature and art of both countries bear ample witness.
“Mountain Uncle” was the name given by the villagers to a splendid striped tiger that lived among the highlands of Kang Wen, the long province which from its cliffs overlooks the Sea of Japan. Hunters rarely saw him, and among his fellow-tigers the Mountain Uncle boasted that, though often fired at, he had never been wounded; while as for traps—he knew all about them and laughed at the devices used by man to catch him and to strip him of his coveted skin. In summer he kept among the high hills and lived on fat deer. In winter, when heavy snow, biting winds, and terrible cold kept human beings within doors, old Mountain Uncle would sally forth to the villages. There he would prowl around the stables, the cattle enclosures, or the pig pens, in hopes of clawing and dragging out a young donkey, a fat calf, or a suckling pig. Too often he succeeded, so that he was the terror of the country for leagues around.
But on coming round a great rock, Mountain Uncle suddenly saw in his path some feet ahead, as he thought, a big tiger like himself.