Читать книгу Tales of a Korean Grandmother - Frances Carpenter - Страница 15

THE

TIGER

AND

THE

PUPPY

THAT hole in our gate is a very good thing, Halmoni," Yong Tu said when his grandmother had finished her tale. "It lets Dog pass through, but it keeps bad people out."

"Yé, Dragon Head," the old woman replied. "And it's too small for a tiger. That's what the puppy found out. By means of the doghole he saved his village when all the wise men and all the brave hunters had failed."

The children moved closer to their grandmother. Here was a new story about a tiger. There was nothing that made the shivers go up and down their backs so delightfully as tales about this mighty King of the Mountains.

Korean tigers are larger than their brothers in warmer countries. The soft fur of their tawny coats is thicker and longer, so as to protect them from the sharp winter cold of the high mountain sides on which they live.

Especially in the north, in those times, these huge yellow-and-black beasts were the terror of the countrysides. In the summer they fed upon the mountain deer and the little sucklings of the wild boar. But when the winter came and game was scarce in those rocky hills, the tigers crept down into the valleys. They prowled through the villages and even crept into the cities. Yong Tu and Ok Cha could themselves remember when a tiger once made its way into the very courtyards of the Emperor's palace in Seoul.

"To this village in the north," Halmoni began her story, "there came one winter a great tiger, far bigger than any those people ever had seen. Strong was this beast, strong enough to carry off a grown man. And carry off a man it did, a man who was foolish enough to go out on the village street after night had fallen. Cows were not safe from that tiger, and pigs disappeared unless they were shut up tight inside the strong walls of the village courtyards.

"'We must set traps for Mountain Uncle,' said the head official of the village. And they dug a pit at each end of the village street. Over these deep yawning holes they laid small logs and branches. They covered them lightly with earth and leaves, to deceive the great beast. When he walked across them, he would surely fall in.

"But the tiger seemed to know about the hidden traps. He did not walk across them. Even when they were baited with live pigs, he did not go near them. Yet the village people could tell that he still came. The head official himself was frightened almost out of his wits by the sound of that tiger clawing away at the grass thatch on his roof. Only by good luck and by shouting, and by beating on brass pots, did he succeed in driving the great beast away.