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The Logger's Daughter and The Phantom.
There lived a logger, his wife and their
daughter. The daughter was well known for her beauty
in their village.
One day, the logger was called by the landowner.
The landowner said that if he could not pay his
debts which the landowner had lent him half a year
before, he had to hand over his daughter.
The logger had no way of paying back the money at
that time, but he never wanted to hand over his
daughter. He hated the landowner, and shed tears of
grief.
"What a hateful man! How vexing!"
At the moment, "What is so vexing?" someone asked
him from behind.
Turning back, he saw a handsome young man smiling
at him. The logger was deep in thought so that he
told him all. Then the young man said, "OK, I will
pay back the money for you."
"What? You pay back for me?" the logger asked him
in surprise.
"But give me your daughter as my wife in
exchange."
The logger was surprised again and said, "I have
to ask my daughter."
Therefore, they went to the poor loggers house.
The daughter, looking down when she was told the
story, said, "I'll do as you say."
When the young man heard her reply, he looked
very happy and brought a sackful of money. "You will
be able to pay back your debts and may have a lot of
money left. You will never worry about your living.
I will take your daughter along right now, but you
need not have any anxiety."
Saying so, the young man grasped her hand and
disappeared like a whiff of wind. The logger and his
wife were so sad that they couldn't say good-by to
her. They looked at the mountain that their daughter
was taken over, and could do nothing but shed tears
over their fate.
However, they were able to pay off their debts
and live better than before thanks to their
daughter.
In a dark tunnel in the mountain, the young man
stood in front of her. She realized that there stood
not a handsome young man but a shaggy phantom whose
eyes gleamed with a strange blue.
The phantom forced her to do all housework in the
tunnel. Once he went out from the tunnel, he
transformed himself into a handsome young man, in
the tunnel, a shaggy phantom.
The daughter spent every day frightened by the
phantom. She wished for nothing but for the day,
when she could get away from the phantom and go back
to her home.
One day, an idea flashed through her mind. The
daughter, who was always unfriendly to the phantom,
spoke to the phantom in a friendly way.
"What do you dislike most?"
The phantom answered with pleasure because he had
never been treated in such a way.
"I can't put up with a white dog and a white
cock. You must not let them come close to me."
The next morning, the daughter told a lie. "I do
not feel well. It may get worse, I think. I've heard
about a peach in the sky that can cure any illness
in the world."
"You can have any number of peaches in the sky!
OK. I will take back a bagful of them in about 10
days. Take good care of our house while I am away."
So saying, the phantom, pleased with her request,
flew away like lightning.
This was a rare chance for her to get away. She
quickly took as many treasures as she could take
before escaping the tunnel, and ran and ran over the
mountains. Then she reached her home and threw
herself into the arms of her parents.
The daughter told all the circumstances to her
parents and gathered as many white dogs and cocks as
possible. They killed the cocks to put them all
around their house and scattered their blood in the
garden. The white dogs, however, kept in leash
around the trees in a garden, at the entrance to the
house and around the gatepoles.
The phantom, carrying a huge bag of peaches, came
back to the tunnel. But he couldn't find the
daughter anywhere. The phantom knew the daughter had
gone away and rushed to the logger house in furious
anger. However, he couldn't go into the house
because of the white dogs wildly barking at him, of
the white cocks hung on all around the house and of
the smell of the blood. Then, throwing away the bag,
the phantom ran away to the tunnel as fast as he
could.
The phantom never appeared again because he saw
the white dogs and cocks at the same time.
After all, the logger and his wife became very
rich, thanks to the treasures that their daughter
had taken away from the phantom. |