The Old Man Who Became a Fish

Some years ago a noted official became the magistrate of Ko-song

County. On a certain day a guest called on him to pay his respects,

and when noon came the magistrate had a table of food prepared for

him, on which was a dish of skate soup. When the guest saw the soup he

twisted his features and refused it, saying, "To-day I am fasting from

meat, and so beg to be excused." His face grew very pale, and tears

flowed from his eyes. The magistrate thought this behaviour strange,

and asked him two or three times the meaning of it. When he could no

longer withhold a reply, he went into all the particulars and told

him the story.

"Your humble servant," he said, "has in his life met with much

unheard-of and unhappy experience, which he has never told to a

living soul, but now that your Excellency asks it of me, I cannot

refrain from telling. Your servant's father was a very old man,

nearly a hundred, when one day he was taken down with a high fever,

in which his body was like a fiery furnace. Seeing the danger he was

in, his children gathered about weeping, thinking that the time of his

departure had surely come. But he lived, and a few days later said to

us, 'I am burdened with so great a heat in this sickness that I am

not able to endure it longer. I would like to go out to the bank of

the river that runs before the house and see the water flowing by,

and be refreshed by it. Do not disobey me now, but carry me out at

once to the water's edge.'

"We remonstrated with him and begged him not to do so, but he grew

very angry, and said, 'If you do not as I command, you will be the

death of me'; and so, seeing that there was no help for it, we bore

him out and placed him on the bank of the river. He, seeing the water,

was greatly delighted, and said, 'The clear flowing water cures my

sickness.' A moment later he said further, 'I'd like to be quite alone

and rid of you all for a little. Go away into the wood and wait till

I tell you to come.'

"We again remonstrated about this, but he grew furiously angry, so

that we were helpless. We feared that if we insisted, his sickness

would grow worse, and so we were compelled to yield. We went a short

distance away and then turned to look, when suddenly the old father

was gone from the place where he had been seated. We hurried back

to see what had happened. My father had taken off his clothes and

plunged into the water, which was muddied. His body was already half

metamorphosed into a skate. We saw its transformation in terror,

and did not dare to go near him, when all at once it became changed

into a great flatfish, that swam and plunged and disported itself

in the water with intense delight. He looked back at us as though he

could hardly bear to go, but a moment later he was off, entered the

deep sea, and did not again appear.

"On the edge of the stream where he had changed his form we found his

finger-nails and a tooth. These we buried, and to-day as a family we

all abstain from skate fish, and when we see the neighbours frying

or eating it we are overcome with disgust and horror."

Im Bang.