Annoyance Will Take Your Tongue, Greed Will Take Your LIfe

Possibly my favorite foreign fable, not for its moral but because I like the plot, is "Shitakiri Suzume", or, as translated into English, "The Tongue-Cut Sparrow". This fable is very old, the exact date of publication unknown, but was written between 1890 and 1901. I haven't been able to find the original author, though I do know it was originally published with an editor by the surname of Hasegaway.
In the fable, there is an elderly couple and the husband's pet sparrow. The old man is kindly and gentle while his wife is mean-spirited and tempered. Some versions vary, with the old man just being her neighbor, though it's always the man who owns the sparrow and the woman is spiteful. The spousal relationship is the one I learned first, so that's the one I stick to.

The old man's sparrow sang every day, and it annoyed the old woman. One day, her husband left to go to the village and she prepared a rice starch to do the laundry with. The old man forgot to lock his sparrow's cage, and the little bird escaped. While the grumpy old woman attended the washing of the clothing, the sparrow found her rice starch and ate it.

Upon finding her starch gone, she sees the sparrow and demands where her starch has gone. The sparrow tells her that he ate it. Angry, the old woman grabs a pair of shears and cuts off the sparrow's tongue, making sure that he'll never sing again. She then releases him to the wild.

When her husband comes home and finds his sparrow gone, he asks his wife where he went and she nonchalantly tells him that she released it to the forest. Distressed, the old man runs into the forest to find his pet.

Along the way, he gets tired and asks some animals if they had seen his sparrow. They told him that they'd seen it heading towards the sparrow lodge deep in the trees. He travels until he finds the sparrow lodge and knocks on the doors. When the sparrows answer and inquire as to why he's there, they let him in. When he enters, he sees his pet sparrow there and happily greets him. The rest of the sparrows are happy to see their visitor and hospitably entertain their guest with dances, skits and eventually dinner. When it is time for the old man to leave, he is offered  two boxes as gifts from the sparrows, saying he may only take one. One box is very big while the other is small. Since the old man is frail and not as strong as he once was, he takes the smaller box.

He returns home very late and his wife starts nagging at him for this. He tells her about his attendance at the sparrow's home and opens his box to see what is in it. It contained many wonderful and valuable treasures, and the wife immediately ceases her chastising.

Forming a plan, she dashes into the forest late at night to obtain the other box he left behind. She rudely awakens the sparrows by banging on their doors and demands for them to entertain her. They reluctantly do so, as they are polite folk. When it came time for the old woman to leave, she greedily took the large box.

Since she too was old and frail, the large box weighed down on her, so she decided to put it down in to rest halfway home in the middle of the forest. Her greed overtook her and she couldn't wait to see its contents. She opened the box and many demons leapt out. They ate her all up and the husband lived contentedly alone for the rest of his life.



This is a popular tale that has even made its appearance in videogames and had many translations. I enjoy this story because of its blunt way of saying not to be too greedy. I think the obvious meaning would be not to be mean and spiteful, but because the woman wanted more riches, she takes a box she can't even handle and is eaten because of it.