Tales of Laughter / A third fairy book

by Unknown

At last he pursued them into a distant field, where he lost sight of them. He was by this time so hot and tired that he sat down to rest. By little and little his eyes closed, his head dropped upon a mossy bank, and he fell fast asleep.

Then he dreamed that a merry band of children came into the field, laughing and shouting. They sat down upon the ground in a ring, and one who seemed the eldest, a boy of fourteen or fifteen, came close to the bank on which he lay asleep, and, raising a big stone near his head, drew from under it a small wooden Mallet.

Then in his dream Kané saw this big boy stand in the middle of the ring with the Mallet in his hand, and ask the children each in turn, “What would you like the Mallet to bring you?” The first child answered, “A kite.” The big boy shook the Mallet, upon which appeared immediately a fine kite with tail and string all complete. The next cried, “A battledore.” Out sprang a splendid battledore and a shower of shuttlecocks. Then a little girl shyly whispered, “A doll.” The Mallet was shaken, and there stood a beautifully dressed doll. “I should like all the fairy-tale books that have ever been written in the whole world,” said a bright-eyed intelligent maiden, and no sooner had she spoken than piles upon piles of beautiful books appeared. And so at last the wishes of all the children were granted, and they stayed a long time in the field with the things the Mallet had given them. At last they got tired, and prepared to go home; the big boy first carefully hiding the Mallet under the stone from whence he had taken it. Then all the children went away.

Presently Kané awoke, and gradually remembered his dream. In preparing to rise he turned round, and there, close to where his head had lain, was the big stone he had seen in his dream. “How strange!” he thought, expecting he hardly knew what; he raised the stone, and there lay the Mallet!

He took it home with him, and, following the example of the children he had seen in his dream, shook it, at the same time calling out, “Gold” or “Rice,” “Silk” or “Saké.” Whatever he called for immediately flew out of the Mallet, so that he could have everything he wanted, and as much of it as he liked.

Kané being now a rich and prosperous man, Chô was of course jealous of him, and determined to find a magic mallet which would do as much for him. He came, therefore, to Kané and borrowed seed-rice, which he planted and tended with care, being impatient for it to grow and ripen soon.

It grew well and ripened soon, and now Chô watched daily for the swallows to appear. And, to be sure, one day a flight of swallows came and began to eat up the rice.

Chô was delighted at this, and drove them away, pursuing them to the distant field where Kané had followed them before. There he lay down, intending to go to sleep as his brother had done, but the more he tried to go to sleep the wider awake he seemed.

Presently the band of children came skipping and jumping, so he shut his eyes and pretended to be asleep, but all the time watched anxiously what the children would do. They sat down in a ring, as before, and the big boy came close to Chô’s head and lifted the stone. He put down his hand to lift the Mallet, but no mallet was there.

One of the children said, “Perhaps that lazy old farmer has taken our Mallet.” So the big boy laid hold of Chô’s nose, which was rather long, and gave it a good pinch, and all the other children ran up and pinched and pulled his nose, and the nose itself got longer and longer; first it hung down to his chin, then over his chest, next down to his knees, and at last to his very feet.