Chinese Fairy Tales and Legends by Frederick H. Martens & Richard Wilhelm

Author:Frederick H. Martens & Richard Wilhelm [Martens, Frederick H. & Wilhelm, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Ghost Stories

49

The Talking Silver Foxes

Silver foxes are special, because they can talk. They tend to be very sure of themselves and love taunting humans, but they may have met their match in the farmer in this story.

Silver foxes resemble other foxes but are yellow, fire red or white in colour. They know how to influence human beings, too. There is a kind of silver fox that can learn to speak like a man in the space of one year. These foxes are called Talking Foxes.

South-west of the bay of Kaiutschou is a mountain by the edge of the sea. Shaped like a tower, it is known as Tower Mountain. On the mountain stands an old temple with the image of a goddess, known as the Old Mother of Tower Mountain. When children fall ill in the surrounding villages, the magicians often give orders that paper figures of them be burned at her altar, or little lime images of them be placed around it. For this reason, the altar and its surroundings are covered with hundreds of figures of children made in lime. Paper flowers, shoes and clothing are also brought to the Old Mother, and lie in a confusion of colours.

Pilgrimage festivals take place on the third day of the third month, and the ninth day of the ninth month, and then there are theatrical performances, and the holy writings are read. There is also an annual fair. The girls and women of the neighbourhood burn incense and pray to the goddess. Parents who have no children go there and pick out one of the little children made of lime, and tie a red thread around its neck, or even secretly break off a small bit of its body, dissolve it in water and drink it. Then they pray quietly that a child may be sent them.

Behind the temple is a great cave where, in former times, some talking foxes used to live. They would even come out and seat themselves on the point of a steep rock by the wayside. When a wanderer came by, they would talk to him in this fashion: ‘Wait a bit, neighbour, and smoke a pipe!’ The traveller would look around in astonishment and fear, to see where the voice came from. Unless he were exceptionally brave, he would break out in a sweat and run away in terror. Then the foxes would laugh: ‘Hi, hi!’

It so happened one day that a farmer was ploughing on the side of the mountain. When he looked up, he saw a man with a straw hat, wearing a mantle of woven grass and carrying a pick across his shoulder coming along the way.

‘Neighbour Wang,’ said the stranger, ‘first smoke a pipeful and take a little rest! Then I will help you plough.’ Then he called out ‘Hu!’, the way farmers do when they talk to their cattle.

The farmer looked at him more closely and saw then that he was a Talking Fox. He waited for his chance, and when it came gave him a lusty blow with his ox whip.

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