Legends & Folktales

A king took an official’s wife, and buried the two of them in separate graves to keep them apart. Then a tree came up out of each grave, and the branches found each other in the air.

The swordsmith knew the king would kill him for taking three years over a sword, so he hid the better half of the pair in a pillar and left it to a son who had not been born yet.

For nine years a mountain village sent a girl of twelve into the serpent cave on the first day of the eighth month. The tenth girl walked in on her own feet, carrying a sword and leading a dog.

A failed examination candidate walking home in the rain meets a woman herding sheep beside the road. She is not a shepherdess, and the sheep are not sheep, and the letter she gives him is addressed to the bottom of a lake.