Thinking the treasure would be great in proportion to the weight of the basket, the old woman replied, “Let me have the heavy one.”
Receiving this, she started home with it on her back, the sparrows laughing at her as she went. It was as heavy as a stone, and hard to carry, but at last she got back with it to her house.
Then, when she took off the lid and looked in, a whole troop of frightful creatures came bouncing out from the inside, and at once they caught her up and flew away with her.
Battle of the Monkey and the Crab
A Monkey and a Crab once met when going round a mountain.
The Monkey had picked up a persimmon-seed, and the Crab had a piece of toasted rice-cake. The Monkey, seeing this, and wishing to get something that could be turned to good account at once, said, “Pray, exchange that rice-cake for this persimmon-seed.” The Crab, without a word, gave up his cake, and took the persimmon-seed and planted it. At once it sprung up, and soon became a tree so high one had to look far up to see it. The tree was full of persimmons, but the Crab had no means of climbing it, so he asked the Monkey to scramble up and get the fruit for him. The Monkey got up on a limb of the tree and began to eat the persimmons. The unripe ones he threw at the Crab, but all the ripe and good ones he put in his pouch. The Crab under the tree thus got his shell badly bruised, and only by good luck escaped into his hole, where he lay distressed with pain, and not able to get up. Now, when the relatives and household of the Crab heard how matters stood, they were surprised and angry, and declared war, and attacked the Monkey, who, leading forth a numerous following, bade defiance to the other party. The crabs, finding themselves unable to meet and cope with this force, became still more exasperated and enraged, and retreated into their hole and held a council of war. Then came a rice-mortar, a pestle, a bee, and an egg, and together they devised a deep-laid plot to be avenged.
First, they requested that peace be made with the crabs; and thus they induced the king of the monkeys to enter their hole unattended, and seated him on the hearth. The Monkey, not suspecting any plot, took the hibashi, or poker, to stir up the slumbering fire, when bang! went the egg, which was lying hidden in the ashes, and burned the Monkey’s arm. Surprised and alarmed, he plunged his arm into the pickle-tub in the kitchen to relieve the pain of the burn. Then the bee which was hidden near the tub stung him sharply in his face, already wet with tears. Without waiting to brush off the bee, and howling bitterly, he rushed for the back door; but just then some seaweed entangled his legs and made him slip. Then down came the pestle, tumbling on him from a shelf, and the mortar, too, came rolling down on him from the roof of the porch and broke his back, and so weakened him that he was unable to rise up. Then out came the crabs in a crowd, and brandishing on high their pinchers they pinched the Monkey so sorely that he begged them for forgiveness and promised never to repeat his meanness and treachery.
The Cub’s Triumph
Once upon a time there lived in a forest a badger and a mother fox with one little Cub.
There were no other beasts in the wood, because the hunters had killed them all with bows and arrows, or by setting snares. The deer, and the wild boar, the hares, the weasels, and the stoats—even the bright little squirrels—had been shot, or had fallen into traps. At last, only the badger and the fox, with her young one, were left, and they were starving, for they dared not venture from their holes for fear of the traps.