When the fisherman moved, the watchers heard, and rejoicing, they all cried, “Our chow is again alive.”
Great was the joy of the people, and, for many years, the fisherman ruled in the province and enjoyed the possessions of the former chow.
But, as time went by, the fisherman forgot the crow had been the author of all his good fortune, that all were the gifts of a crow, and he drove all crows from the rice fields. Even did he attempt to banish them from the province. Perceiving this, the god of wisdom again assumed the form of a crow and came down and sat near the one-time fisherman.
“O, chow, wouldst thou desire to go where all is pleasure and delight?” asked the crow.
“Let me go,” replied the chow. And the crow took him on his back and flew with him to the house where, as a fisherman he had lived in poverty and squalor, and ever had he to remain there.
The Legend of the Rice
In the days when the earth was young and all things were better than they now are, when men [86 ] and women were stronger and of greater beauty, and the fruit of the trees was larger and sweeter than that which we now eat, rice, the food of the people, was of larger grain. One grain was all a man could eat, and in those early days, such, too, was the merit of the people, they never had to toil gathering the rice, for, when ripe, it fell from the stalks and rolled into the villages, even unto the granaries.
And upon a year, when the rice was larger and more plentiful than ever before, a widow said to her daughter, “Our granaries are too small. We will pull them down and build larger.”
When the old granaries were pulled down and the new one not yet ready for use, the rice was ripe in the fields. Great haste was made, but the rice came rolling in where the work was going on, and the widow, angered, struck a grain and cried, “Could you not wait in the fields until we were ready? You should not bother us now when you are not wanted.”