No. 80 — The lodging of the tongue-cut sparrow

Record

An honest old man was fond of a sparrow. The greedy old woman next door scolded it for licking her paste, cut its tongue, and it fled. The old man went to visit the sparrow's lodging and was warmly received there. He chose the light wicker trunk and received a treasure, but the greedy old woman chose the heavy wicker trunk and carried it home. When she opened it, it was filled with monsters, a shape that should not be, and filth, and she was startled and died.

Source

Ogasawara Kenkichi (ed.), Shiwa-gun Mukashibanashi-shu (1938) — National Diet Library Digital Collections (Japanese text)

Land

Shiwa District

Type

Shape-Shifting Animals, Strange Fates

Beings

sparrow

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.