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Japanese Folk Tale

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Unpromising Marriages that Became Happy 25<br />

no-kuni, met trials from the governor. He wrestled at Hasedera in<br />

Shinshu. This should be an oral tale.<br />

Konjaku monogatari, maki 16, No. 15. In "Taketori-no-okina" a<br />

drum sounds without being struck.<br />

Chosen mintan shu 28. The beginning is like "The ungrateful man."<br />

The rescuers were a mosquito and a moth.<br />

18. The Wife from the Sky World<br />

Long ago a man who sold clay parching pans was walking in the<br />

mountains on the sixth day of the seventh month. He saw three<br />

maidens bathing and stole the robe of one of them. On his way home<br />

he found one of them crying. He took her home and married her. A<br />

child was born. While she was nursing her three-year-old child one<br />

day, she happened to notice a package wrapped in black paper and<br />

tucked into the rafters. She looked inside the package and found her<br />

lost robe. She realized for the first time that it had been stolen. She<br />

put it on hurriedly and held her child under one arm as she got ready<br />

to ride away on a cloud from behind the house. Her husband returned<br />

just then. She said she was Tanabata. If he wanted to see her, he<br />

should make 1000 pairs of straw sandals and climb up them to her. She<br />

went to the sky after she gave him these instructions. The husband set<br />

out with his whole heart to make the straw sandals, but when he<br />

finished the 999th pair, he could wait no longer. He went out his front<br />

door and saw a white cloud that had come to meet him. He went so<br />

high he could almost touch the Sky with his hands, but he could go no<br />

farther. His wife was weaving upstairs and noticed him. She felt sorry<br />

for him and reached out with the rod which she used for sending the<br />

shuttle back and forth and pulled him up. She presented him to her<br />

parents, but they hated him and made him do all sorts of hard tasks.<br />

His wife's cleverness helped him do them all. It was forbidden to eat<br />

melons in heaven, but his in-laws urged him so much that he did at<br />

last. When he bit into the melon, so much water flowed from it that<br />

he was about to be swept away. His wife called to him that she would<br />

meet him every month, but he was hard of hearing and thought she<br />

said once a year as he floated away. That is why the Tanabata [Vega<br />

and Alstair] meet only once a year.<br />

Kaga wa, Mi toyo-gun, Shishijima<br />

Aomori: Tsugaru m 9, "The bean vine that reached the sky" (Ten sa<br />

nobita mame no hanashi).<br />

Hachinohe: MK II 2 34, "The most skillful flutist in three kingdoms"<br />

(Sangoku ichi no fue j6zu). The bride was the daughter of<br />

the Moon. The latter half is an adventure tale.<br />

Iwate: Shima 186, 106, "The girl from the Sky and the youth" (Ten no<br />

ohime sama to wakamono) and "The feudal lord who sold peaches"

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