No. 12 — The greedy old man
An honest old man dropped a dumpling in the mountains, and when it rolled into a hole, he followed it in and came upon a world of rats. The rats, who had eaten the dumpling, apologized and gave him gold, silver, and treasure, and the old man went home glad. When the greedy old man next door heard of this, he copied him, taking a cat into the hole to frighten the rats, but the rats fled, the hole went completely dark, and he got nothing at all, returning home bruised and bloodied about the head and limbs.
- Land
- Inaba and Hoki
- Beings
- rat
This is an English rendering of our short Japanese summary of the source tale — a summary translated from the Japanese, not a translation of the original text. The summary was drafted and translated with AI assistance, and names and numbers were checked against our records. Tale numbers for this book follow the order in which the tales appear; they are ours, not the book's.