Week 5 Reading Diary: Twenty-Two Goblins

Twenty-Two Goblins translated by Arthur W. Ryder

• A king promises to help a monk
• The monk asks the king to bring a body possessed with a goblin hanging from a tree to the cemetery
• The goblin tells the king stories and then asks him a question
• If the king gets it wrong the goblin will tell another story, if he knows the answer but doesn't tell his head will explode, and if he answers correctly the goblin will jump back into the tree

The Three Lovers

• There is a beautiful girl
• Three men want to marry her
• She refuses to marry one because the other two will be sad
• She gets sick and dies
• One sleeps on her ashes in the cemetery, the other takes her bones to dip in the Ganges River, and the the third becomes a monk and travels away
• The monk comes across a man that has a spell to bring people back to life
• He steals the spell book and brings the girl back to life
• She is more beautiful than ever and they all fight over her
• The goblin asks the king which one deserves to be her husband
• The king says the monk did as a father by bringing her back to life, the second one did as a son by taking her bones to the Ganges, and the first one did as a lover by living a hard life in the cemetery
• The goblin returned to the tree

Brave, Wise, Clever

• There was a beautiful girl
• She said she would only marry either a clever man, a wise man, or a brave man
• Her father came across a clever man and promised her hand in marriage on the seventh day
• Her brother came across a brave man and promised her hand in marriage on the seventh day
• Her mother came across a wise man and promised her hand in marriage on the seventh day
• All three men came on the seventh day, but the girl disappeared
• The wise man said that a giant had taken her to his den
• The clever man made a flying chariot to take them to the den
• The brave man then fought the giant and slew him
• The goblin asks which one deserves to be her husband
• The king says the brave man deserves her because he killed the giant and saved her, the other two were only helpers whom fate gave him
• The goblin returned to the tree

The Girl, Her Husband and Her Brother

• The girl, her husband, and her brother are heading to the girl's father's house
• The husband decides to stop at a temple and worship a goddess
• While there, he decides to sacrifice himself to the goddess since most people sacrifice many living things to this goddess
• The brother of the wife finds the husband dead and in grief kills himself as well
• The girl finds them both dead and asks the goddess to reunite them in another life and prepares to hang herself
• The goddess tells her to put the heads back on the bodies and they will rise
• She does as told, but accidentally switches the heads on the bodies
• The goblin asks which one should be her husband
• The king says the one with the husband's head should be her husband because the head is the most important member, it is how we recognize people
• The goblin returned to the tree

Food, Women, Cotton

• Three men claimed to be experts in food, women, and cotton respectively
• They decided to have the king examine them
• The expert in food refused to eat the food at dinner, he said it smelt of smoke from a burning corpse
• Everyone else thought it was sweet and good, the king later found out it came from rice grown near a crematory
• The expert in women turned down a woman sent to him by the king, he said she smelt like goats
• The king said that she was anointed in perfumes, he later found out that she was raised on goat milk
• The expert in cotton went to sleep on a bed covered in seven quilts, he jumped up in pain and the guards saw a curly red imprint of a hair deeply imprinted on his side
• They uncovered a single hair under the quilts that fit the imprint on the man
• The goblin asks which one was the most clever
• The king answered the expert in cotton because the imprint of hair was visible, the other two could have found out beforehand
• The goblin returned to the tree

The Four Scientific Suitors

• The princess tells her father she cannot choose a husband from so many choices, find her a husband that know one science from beginning to end
• The first man is a working man, he makes five clothes a day
• The second man is a farmer, he can understand the cries of all beasts and birds
• The third is soldier, who has no rival on earth in the science of swordsmanship
• The fourth man is a Brahman, who can bring the dead back to life
• The goblin asks the king which one deserves the girl
• The king says she should obviously be given to the soldier who at least has some manhood to his science. A warrior's daughter should not be given to a working man or a farmer and the Brahman neglects his own affairs, lacking courage
• The goblin returned to the tree

The Three Delicate Wives

• A king had three wives
• One was injured from a lotus petal that fell from her hair into her lap
• The second was burned from the moonbeams that fell on her
• The last was injured from hearing pestles grinding grain, her hands bruised
• The goblin asks which one was the most delicate
• The king responded that the wife that was bruised just by hearing the pestles was the most delicate, nothing touched her and the other two had actual contact
• The goblin returned to the tree

(the goblin in the tree)