[a/]THE LITTLE SINGING FROG
There was once a poor laborer and his wife who had no children. Every day the woman would sigh and say:
"If only we had a child!"
Then the man would sigh, too, and say:
"It would be pleasant to have a little daughter, wouldn't it?"
At last they went on a pilgrimage to a holy shrine and there they prayed God to give them a child.
"Any kind of a child!" the woman prayed. "I'd be thankful for a child of our own even if it were a frog!"
God heard their prayer and sent them a little daughter—not a little girl daughter, however, but a little frog daughter. They loved their little frog child dearly and played with her and laughed and clapped their hands as they watched her hopping about the house. But when the neighbors came in and whispered: "Why, that child of theirs is nothing but a frog!" they were ashamed and they decided that when people were about they had better keep their child hidden in a closet.
So the frog girl grew up without playmates of her own age, seeing only her father and mother. She used to play about her father as he worked. He was a vine-dresser in a big vineyard and of course it was great fun for the little frog girl to hop about among the vines.