No. 18 — Goose soup
An old man picked up and raised a white dog, and it helped him hunt deer, so that he got meat from the game. The greedy old woman next door imitated him and borrowed the dog, but she was stung by bees and failed. Out of spite she killed the dog, and from the place where it was buried a tree grew that bore gold and silver. The old man and his wife gained wealth from the tree, but when the greedy couple next door imitated them, only cow and horse dung came out. They then tried to take also the technique of catching geese with the ashes of the burned tree, but failed; the ashes got into the old man's eyes, he fell from the roof, and his family mistook him for a goose and beat him to death.
- Land
- Shiwa District
- Beings
- dog
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.