After the ceremony of presentation was over, the Queen made a speech, which told the Korean maiden’s fortune and her future.
Cat-kin would be sent back over the clouds and ocean to the King’s palace in the capital of her home land, and there be made a princess. Many nobles and king’s sons from other countries, hearing of her beauty and her wonderful visit to the Island of Gems would come to pay her court as suitors. Many would ask for her hand, to be wedded to her; but she was to marry none but the king’s son, a prince of her own people. [[86]]
“Take these gems, fair maiden, and bestow their virtues and what they mean upon your people,” said the Queen. “A thousand years from now—as men count time—we together will visit Korea again.”
Then both the Queen and Cat-kin, stepping into the silver chariot, drawn by the fire-breathing dragons, plunged on and mounted up into space. First they sailed above the clouds and then dipped downwards, steering to Korea and over the mountains, bearing their precious charge to the capital. They reached the ground in a cloud and the wheels of the chariot stood still before the palace gate.
Yet before any mortal eyes could see their full forms, the Queen Mother and the dragons had disappeared, and Cat-kin stood alone, a resplendent maiden of dazzling appearance and in the robes given by the Heavenly Queen Mother, which all recognized at once as coming from the Island of Gems.
A throng of court ladies and palace attendants and a long line of nobles and princes were already waiting for the maiden, who they knew came gift-laden from the Queen Mother, of whom all had heard from childhood. The five gems were laid, each in a covered casket of perfumed wood, encrusted with gold on top and inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Escorted into the throne room by a bevy of [[87]]princesses, the Heavenly Mother’s gifts in the five caskets were reverently placed on silken fans, spread out on a table having on its top the five cushions of crimson velvet.
Then, by lot and word of the diviners, the choice of a first drawing was awarded to a prince of fair face and mien. The other four nobles, one by one and in turn, approached and each was allowed to choose one of the caskets, all of which looked alike, and none was to be opened until the possessor was in his own home.
Now these were the gifts for body and mind, of which the polished gems were the tokens. According as each prince chose and received, so with the trait, which each gem signified, would his children and posterity be endowed. In the course of centuries, these would become the national features, of twenty millions of Koreans.
One by one the caskets were opened by each prince, and therein he discovered what was a trait in the character of the Korean people. These were: