Cursed by the Snake

Prince Ha Yun’s old family home was in the county of Keum-chon. He was a famous minister of state in peaceful and prosperous times, and he often went to rest in his summer house there. It was a large, well-kept mansion, and his children lived in it for many years after his death.

The people of that county told a very strange story about the Ha family and their good fortune.

In an upstairs room stood a large crock where flour was kept. One day a servant lifted the lid to scoop out some flour, and out of the depths of the jar rose an enormous snake. The servant stumbled back in terror and ran to tell the master.

The master sent his men to bring the jar downstairs. They broke it open, and out came a huge and dreadful snake, bigger than anyone had ever seen. Several servants set upon it with clubs and killed it. Then they heaped wood over it and set the whole pile alight.

A foul smoke rose from the fire and filled the house, and everyone who lived there died of it, so that no one was left to carry on the family. Others who went into the house afterward died too. The place was cursed, and it was left empty and deserted. A little later a mysterious fire broke out and burned down the remaining buildings, leaving only bare ground.

The legend ends by saying that people called the spot haunted and would not build there.

About this tale

“Cursed by the Snake” is chapter XII of Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies, translated by James Scarth Gale in 1913. It is one of Im Bang’s stories, told as something the local people said about a real family seat in Keum-chon County.

Gale prefaces it with a sketch of Ha Yon, who passed the state examination in 1396 and rose to be a royal censor, Chief Justice and Prime Minister. That background is not part of the tale and is left out of the retelling. Gale’s own introduction warns that some of Im Bang’s stories are “very gruesome,” and this is one of the darker ones.

Read the original: Korean Folk Tales (Project Gutenberg)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: a dark legend involving a snake’s killing and the deaths of an entire household.

From a full house to an empty place

The flourishing mansion at the opening makes the bare ground at the end feel like a complete reversal. Each attempt to remove danger makes the scene larger: the jar is broken, the snake is killed, its body is burned, and finally the house itself burns. The tale gives an abandoned place a remembered cause. Its curse belongs to that explanation; the narrative alone cannot establish a real cause of illness or describe the present condition of the site.

Map the escalation

Draw five boxes for jar, snake, fire, smoke and empty ground. Connect each box with what people choose to do next. At which point could a different response have changed this particular sequence?

Questions to ask

• What did the servant find in the flour jar?
• Why do you think people believed the house was cursed?
• Why might a story like this be told about an empty piece of land?

More stories like this

• The Snake’s Revenge — another Korean snake tale from the same book
• Haunted Houses — more Korean stories of places no one wants to live
• Faithful Mo — another tale connected with Prince Ha