Читать книгу Favorite Children's Stories from China & Tibet - Lotta Carswell-Hume - Страница 9

The Fox Turns a Somersault

South China

This is the story of a poor countryman who lived all alone in a little mud brick house with a thatched roof. He was very poor and, since he had no wife, he cooked for himself only one meal each day. A kindly fox had been watching him through the window for a long time and she felt very sorry for him. So, one day, when he was out, she stole into the house and changed herself into a woman. She cleaned up the place, cooked a meal for him, and then disappeared.

This went on for some time, until the farmer determined to watch and find out who his kind and unknown visitor was. So he crouched behind a water jar and waited with his gun beside him. Before long he thought he saw the pointed nose of a fox and, sure enough, a sleek fox slid through the hole in the wall into the room. He grabbed his gun and was just about to shoot the fox, when to his amazement, she turned a somersault, and landed on her feet in the form of a beautiful woman. The fox skin fell to the floor.

The farmer waited for her to move into the next room. Then he crept out and took the skin and hid it under the pig trough.

At the end of the day, when the kindly woman's good deeds were all done, she searched everywhere for her fox skin so that she might go back to the forest, but she couldn't find it. Then she knew that she would have to remain a woman and would become the farmer's wife.

They lived happily together for many years, until, one day, the farmer said jokingly to one of his children: 'Your mother is really a fox."

The little girls clung to their beautiful mother and cried out: "She is not a fox, she is our own darling mother."

His wife then demanded that he give the children proof of the terrible thing he had said, so he went over to the pig trough, and there was the fox skin just where he had hidden it.

He thought it would be a joke to show it to the children, but, as soon as his wife saw her old fox skin, she turned a somersault, slipped into the skin, ran out of the door into the forest, and they never saw her again.