Hyung-bo and Nahl-bo

In the province of Chullado, in southern Korea, there lived two brothers, one very rich and the other very poor. When their father died, the elder brother, instead of taking his father’s place and providing for the younger children, kept the whole inheritance for himself and left his younger brother with nothing at all.

Both brothers were married. Nahl Bo, the elder, had several concubines besides his wife but no children, and his wives were always quarreling. Hyung Bo, the younger, had only one wife and several children, and the two of them were peaceful and content, each helping the other carry the heavy load that life had laid on them.

The elder brother lived in a fine, large compound with warm, comfortable houses. The younger had built himself a hut of broom straw, thatched so poorly that when it rained, the water poured in onto the earth floor. The room was so small that when Hyung Bo stretched out his legs in his sleep, his feet were likely to poke through the wall. They had no heated floor and had to sleep on the cold ground, where the insects were so thick that they often drove the family outdoors.

They had no money for comforts and were glad when a bit of luck brought them the bare necessities. Hyung Bo worked whenever he could find work, but rainy days and slack seasons were hard. His wife did plain sewing, and together they made straw sandals for peasants and peddlers. At fair time the sandal business was good, but then a day came when there was no food left in the house, the string for making sandals was used up and there was no money to buy more. The children cried to their mother for food until her heart ached, and their father wandered off in a last attempt to find something to keep his family alive.

There was not one grain of rice left. Even a poor rat that lived with this kind family grew desperate, running round the little house night after night without finding anything to eat. It squealed so loudly that it woke the neighbors, who said it was complaining that it had worn its legs off searching for a single grain of rice.

At last the mother told her son to go to his uncle, explain plainly how badly off they were, and ask him to lend them enough rice to live on until they found work, when they would surely pay it back. The boy did not want to go. His uncle would not even nod to him in the street, and he was afraid he would be whipped. But his mother insisted, and he obeyed.

Outside his uncle’s house were many well-fed cows, pens full of big fat pigs and chickens everywhere. There were many dogs too, and they ran at him barking and tore his clothes, frightening him so badly that he almost ran away. But he spoke kindly to them, and they quieted down, and one dog came and licked his hand as if ashamed of the others. A maidservant told him to go away, but when he said he was her master’s nephew, she smiled and let him into an inner courtyard, where his uncle sat on the little porch under the broad eaves.

“Who are you?” the man demanded gruffly.

“I am your brother’s son,” said the boy. “We are starving at home. We haven’t eaten for three days. My father is away looking for work, but we are so hungry. We only ask you to lend us a little rice until we can pay you back.”

The uncle’s eyes narrowed and his brows drew together so angrily that the boy began looking for a way to escape. At last the uncle said, “My rice is locked up, and I have ordered that the granaries stay shut. The flour is sealed and cannot be touched. If I give you leftovers, the dogs will bark at you and try to take them. If I give you the dregs from the wine press, the pigs will be jealous and squeal. If I give you bran, the cows and chickens will chase you. Get out, and don’t let me see you here any more!” And he seized the poor boy by the collar and threw him out into the outer courtyard, hurting him so that he cried bitterly from pain and misery.

At home the poor mother sat jiggling her baby in her weak arms and comforting the other children: their brother had gone to their uncle for food, and soon the pot would be boiling and everyone would have enough. When they heard footsteps, they all scrambled to the door, only to see the boy coming home empty-handed and red-eyed, bravely trying to look cheerful.

“Did your uncle whip you?” asked his mother, more worried about her son than about her own hunger.

“No,” the brave boy stammered. “He’s gone to the capital on business.” He hoped that would stop any more questions on such a painful subject.

“What shall I do?” the poor woman cried among her weeping children. It seemed there was nothing to do but starve. Then she thought of her own straw shoes, which were hardly worn, and sent them to market, where they fetched three cash. With that tiny sum she bought a little rice, beans and vegetables, and for the moment they were saved. With full stomachs the little ones went back to playing happily, but their mother was full of worry about tomorrow.

Their luck had turned, though. The father came home with a bundle of firewood he had gathered on the mountains, and with the money from it they bought back the shoes and more food. Early the next morning both parents went out to look for work. The wife found a job winnowing rice. The husband caught up with a boy carrying a pack whose back was so blistered he could hardly bear it. Hyung Bo strapped the pack frame onto his own back and carried it for him, and when they arrived that evening, the boy gave him some cash as well as his supper and a bed. During the night a gentleman wanted a letter carried quickly to a distant place, and Hyung Bo was well paid for taking it.

On his way home from that errand, he heard of a rich man who had been arrested by the corrupt local magistrate on a false charge and was to be publicly beaten unless he paid a large bribe. Hyung Bo went to see the prisoner and agreed to take the beating in his place for three thousand cash. The man was glad to get off so cheaply, and Hyung Bo took the beating. He limped home, where his wife greeted him with tears and wails, for he was a sorry sight. But he was cheerful. It had been a rich day’s work, he explained; he had only put up with a little whipping, and he would get three thousand cash for it.

The money never came. The trick was found out, the rich man was punished too, and, being rather stingy, he saw no reason to pay for something that had done him no good. Then the wife cried indeed over her husband’s wrongs and their bad luck. But Hyung Bo cheered her up. “If we do right, we will surely succeed,” he said.

Spring was coming, and soon he found work plowing and sowing. They gave their little house its spring cleaning and decorated the door with the usual good-luck sayings, asking fortune to bless their home.

With spring came the birds from the south, and they seemed to like this poor family’s home best of all, just as the rats and insects did. Swallows built their nests under the eaves. As they built their little mud castles, Hyung Bo said to his wife, “I’m afraid to let these birds nest there. Our house is so weak it may fall down, and then what will the poor birds do?” But the little visitors were not worried and stayed under the friendly roof, as if they felt safe there.

By and by the little nests were full of bustle and noise; the eggs had hatched, and rings of wide-open beaks could be seen in every nest. Hyung Bo and his children were delighted with these new members of the family and often gave them bits of their own small share of food, so that the birds grew quite tame and hopped in and out of the hut as they pleased.

One day, when the young birds were taking their first flying lessons, Hyung Bo was lying on the ground and saw a big roof snake crawl along and gobble up several of them before he could get up to help. One little bird struggled free and fell, but both its legs caught in the fine mesh of a reed blind and were broken, and it hung helpless within the snake’s reach. Hyung Bo quickly snatched it down, and with his wife’s help he bound up the broken legs, using dried fish skin for splints. He laid the little patient in a warm place, and the bones soon mended, so that the bird began hopping round the room and pecking at the crumbs put out for it. Then the splints were taken off, and it flew away happily to join the others.

Autumn came. One evening, on the ninth day of the ninth moon, as the family sat by the door, they saw the bird with the crooked legs sitting on the clothesline, singing to them.

“I think he’s thanking us and saying goodbye,” said Hyung Bo, “because the birds are all going south now.”

It seemed to be true, for they saw their little friend no more, and they felt lonely without the birds in the empty nests. Meanwhile the birds were paying their respects to the king of the birds in the bird land beyond the frost. When the king saw the little crooked-legged bird, he asked for an explanation, and the little fellow told him of his narrow escape from a snake that had eaten many of his brothers and cousins, of the accident in the blind, and of how a very poor but very kind man had rescued and cared for him.

His bird majesty was very pleased. He gave the injured bird a seed of the gourd family, engraved with fine golden characters, to take to his rescuer in the spring.

The winter passed, and spring found the family almost as poor as ever. One day they heard a familiar bird song, and running out, they saw their crooked-legged friend with something in its beak that looked like a seed. It dropped it on the ground, sang to them about the king’s gratitude and his gift, and flew away.

Hyung Bo picked up the seed curiously. On one side was the name of the plant, and on the other, in fine golden letters, a message: “Bury me in soft earth, and give me plenty of water.” They did so, and in four days a little shoot appeared. They watched in amazement as the stem shot up and climbed all over the house, covering it like a bower and threatening to crush the flimsy hut with its weight. It blossomed, and four small gourds began to form. They grew enormous, and Hyung Bo could hardly keep from cutting them. But his wife persuaded him to wait until the frost had ripened them, so that they could eat the insides and sell the shells as water jars and make a double profit. He waited, though not very patiently, until the ninth moon, when the vines had withered away and the gourds sat alone high on the roof.

Then Hyung Bo took a saw and sawed open the first huge gourd. It took so long that when he finished, he thought he must be fainting, for out of the gourd stepped two handsome boys carrying fine bottles of wine and a jade table set with dainty cups. Hyung Bo staggered back and looked at his wife, who was just as dazed. Then one of the youths set the table before them and announced that the bird king had sent these gifts to the man who had helped one of his subjects, the bird with the broken legs.

Before they could answer, the other youth set a silver bottle on the table. “This wine will bring the dead back to life,” he said. A second bottle would give sight to the blind. Then he fetched two golden bottles from the gourd. One held tobacco that would give speech to the speechless when it was smoked, and the other held wine that would keep away old age and death.

Having said this, the two youths vanished, leaving Hyung Bo and his wife almost speechless. They looked at the gourd, then at the little table, then at each other, to be sure it was not a dream. At last Hyung Bo said that since he was very hungry, he would open another gourd and hope to find something to eat, because just now he needed something to keep life going more than something to bring it back.

When the next gourd was opened, out flowed all kinds of furniture and clothing, with rolls and rolls of fine silk and satin, linen and the best cotton. The satin alone took up far more room than the whole gourd, and yet the yard was strewn with costly furniture and the finest cloth besides. They hardly looked at the goods, so amazed were they, and it all seemed so unreal that they were afraid to wait. Both of them sawed away at the next gourd, and out came a crew of carpenters with tools and timber, who began putting up a house as quickly and quietly as thought. Before Hyung Bo and his wife could even get up off the ground, a fine house stood before them, with courtyards, servants’ quarters, stables and granaries. At the same moment a long train of bulls and ponies appeared, loaded with rice and other goods as tribute from the district, and others came bringing money, servants and clothing.

Now they were sure they were in dreamland, and they decided to enjoy giving orders while it lasted. They told the servants to put the money in the reception room, the clothes in the loft, the rice in the granaries and the animals in the stables, and they sent others to prepare a bath so that they could put on their fine new clothes before it was too late. The servants obeyed, which astonished the couple even more, and they were so lost in wonder that they forgot all about the fourth gourd.

The servants reminded them of it and were told to saw it open carefully. Out stepped a maiden as beautiful as all the gifts that had come before her. Hyung Bo had never seen anyone to compare with her loveliness, and he could only stand and stare. But his wife saw only a rival. She demanded to know who the girl was, where she came from and what she wanted.

“I have been sent by the bird king to be this man’s second wife,” said the maiden.

The wife’s face darkened, and she ordered the girl to go back where she came from. Then she scolded her husband for not being satisfied with a house and estate, servants and heaps of money, and said this new trouble was all his greed’s fault for opening the fourth gourd. By now Hyung Bo had found his voice. He sternly reproached her for behaving like that over heavenly gifts when only yesterday she had been little better than a beggar. He told her to go to the women’s quarters, where she would be mistress, and never to show such bad temper over it a second time. Then he welcomed the maiden and showed her to rooms of her own.

When Nahl Bo heard of the wonderful changes at his brother’s place, he went to see for himself. He found the reports were true and accused his brother of getting his riches dishonestly. Hyung Bo firmly denied it. Where, he asked, could anyone steal a house, rich clothes and fine furniture and set them up in a day where his hovel had stood? Nahl Bo demanded an explanation, and Hyung Bo honestly told him everything: how he had saved the bird from the snake and set its broken legs, how the bird had brought him a seed with golden writing on it, and how the four gourds that grew from it had held all these gifts.

Even then the mean brother kept up his charges and accused Hyung Bo, in an ugly way, of being worse than a thief for keeping all these riches instead of sharing them with his elder brother as a good younger brother should. That hurt Hyung Bo, and in his kindness he forgave his unbrotherly brother all his past unkindness and gave him generous gifts. He might have given him more, but the greedy man caught sight of the lovely maiden and demanded her. That was too much even for patient Hyung Bo, and he refused with unusual firmness. They quarreled, and Nahl Bo stormed off, determined to use his brother’s secret to get rich gifts of his own.

When he got home, he struck at every bird he could see and ordered his servants to do the same. After harming many, he caught one, broke its legs on purpose, bound them up with fish skin and splints and laid it in a warm place until it got better and flew away, bandages and all. It all went as he expected. When the bird king asked the bird about its crooked legs, it told its story, but it dwelt on the man’s cruelty in attacking so many birds and then breaking its own legs. The king understood perfectly and gave the injured bird a seed to take to the wicked man in the spring.

When spring came, Nahl Bo was sitting cross-legged in his little room off the courtyard when he heard a familiar bird song. He dropped his long pipe and threw open the paper windows, and there on the clothesline sat a crooked-legged bird with a seed in its beak. He would let no one else touch it, and when the bird dropped the seed and flew off, he jumped out so eagerly that he forgot his shoes and got his clean white socks all muddy. But he got the seed, and he was sure his fortune was made. He planted it carefully, as directed, and tended it himself.

The vines grew wildly, until they covered almost his whole large house and all the outbuildings. And instead of one gourd, or even four, they bore twelve, which grew and grew until the great beams of his house groaned under their weight and he had to wedge them in place to keep them from rolling off the roofs. He had to hire men to guard them, because now everyone wanted a gourd. People did not know the secret, though. Nahl Bo kept it out of selfishness, and Hyung Bo kept it for fear that everyone would start hurting birds as his wicked brother had done.

The guards were expensive, and the vines’ tendrils loosened the roof tiles as they searched for earth and moisture in the clay beneath. When the rainy season came, plaster fell from inside onto the paper ceilings, the ceilings gave way, dirty water dripped into the rooms, and the house became almost impossible to live in. At last the frost came, the vines withered, and the huge ripe gourds were lowered to the ground amid the shouting of a crowd of laborers who kept getting in each other’s way with their ropes and poles. When the gourds were safely in the courtyard and the great doors locked, Nahl Bo sent everyone away except a carpenter and his helper and got ready for the great surprise.

The carpenter demanded the enormous fee of a thousand cash for opening each gourd, and because Nahl Bo was too impatient to wait for another carpenter and expected to be as rich as a prince in a few moments, he agreed. The men braced the first gourd and began to saw. It seemed a long time before it fell in two. When it did, out came a troupe of tightrope dancers, like those who perform at fairs. Nahl Bo thought there must be some mistake. The dancers sang and danced as well as they could in the crowded courtyard, and the family watched contentedly, thinking they had been sent to celebrate the good fortune to come. But Nahl Bo soon had enough. He wanted his riches, so when the performers began stretching their ropes for a bigger show, he ordered them to stop and leave. To his amazement, they refused to go until he paid them five thousand cash. “You sent for us, and we came,” said their leader. “Pay us, or we’ll live here with you until you do.” There was nothing for it, and with a sinking feeling he paid them and sent them off.

Then Nahl Bo turned on the carpenter. “This is your fault,” he said. “Before you came into this courtyard, these gourds were full of gold, and your work has turned it into beggars.”

The second gourd was no better. Out came a group of Buddhist monks begging for their temple and promising many sons in return for generous offerings. Nahl Bo was disgusted, but he still had faith in the gourds, and to get rid of the monks before they saw his riches, he gave them five thousand cash too.

As soon as the monks had gone, the third gourd was opened, and it was even worse: out came a procession of hired mourners, wailing as loudly as they could, followed by bearers carrying a body on a bier. The whole place was in an uproar. When they were told to go, the mourners said they must be paid for mourning and for the burial. Seeing no help for it, Nahl Bo gave them five thousand cash, and they went out with the bier. Then his wife came into the courtyard and began abusing the carpenter for bringing all this trouble on them. The carpenter grew angry and demanded his money so that he could leave. But the family had no intention of giving up, and it was too late to change carpenters, so he was paid for his work so far and given an advance on the rest, and he set to work on the fourth gourd while Nahl Bo watched in a fever of hope.

Out of it came a band of dancing girls, one from each province, and each had her own song and dance. One sang of the wind god, another of the spirit of the house, another of the coins laid on the ridgepole of every new house for luck. There was a cuckoo song, and a song of an ancient tree whose heart had rotted away, leaving it hollow, though its leaves still came out every spring. There was a song of laughter and mourning that reminded everyone to make rice offerings to the spirits of the dead, and a song to the king of the sun and stars. Last of all, one sang of the twelve months of the year, the hours of the day and the thirty days of the month, and of the new year being born as the old year dies and carries off its troubles, reminding everyone to keep the New Year holiday in clean clothes with good food, so that the coming year would be one of plenty. When they had finished their songs and their graceful dances with waving silk banners, they demanded their pay, and the family fortune shrank by another five thousand cash.

Now Nahl Bo’s wife begged him to stop, but the carpenter, who was secretly enjoying the fun, offered to open the next gourd for five hundred cash. The fifth gourd was opened a little way, and something yellow could be seen inside. Thinking it was gold, they hurriedly split it wide open. But out came a pair of acrobats, a strong man with a boy dressed as a girl balanced on his shoulders. The man danced about singing a song of an ancient king who lived such a wild life that his people hated him. So he built himself a palace in a cave, with a floor of quicksilver, walls studded with jewels and countless lamps that turned darkness into day, and there he feasted and made merry with music and beautiful women, until his enemy discovered the secret and threw the cave open to the daylight, and all the beautiful women vanished in the sun’s rays.

Before he could stop them, Nahl Bo had to pay these performers five thousand cash as well. Even so, he decided to open another. Out of the sixth came a jester who demanded money for his long journey. Nahl Bo paid him, because he had thought of what he believed was a clever idea. He took the wise fool aside and asked him to use his wisdom to point out which of the gourds held gold. The jester looked wise, tapped several gourds and nodded at each one as if it were full of gold.

So the seventh was opened, and out marched a crowd of magistrate’s runners followed by an official. Nahl Bo tried to run from what he knew would be a huge demand for money, but he was caught and beaten for his trouble. The official called for his document case and took out a paper, which his secretary read aloud: Nahl Bo was this lord’s serf and must pay him heavy tribute from now on. They groaned inside, and the wife said that the money was all gone, down to the last cash, while the crowd that had gathered had stolen almost everything worth taking. Still the official’s servants demanded payment and would not leave until they were given a note on the property. Things were now so bad that they could hardly get worse, so the family decided to open every remaining gourd, in case any gold was left.

From the next gourd came a group of ritual practitioners, whom Allen calls “mootang,” offering to drive away the spirit of sickness and make the sick well. They set up their banners for their dance, brought out drums to frighten off demons and called for rice to offer the spirits and clothes to burn for the spirits to wear.

“Get out!” roared Nahl Bo. “I’m not sick, except from visitors like you, who are forever loading down the poor and demanding pay for so-called services. Go and fool somebody else if you can. I want none of your help!”

They were no easier to get rid of than the others, and in the end he had to pay them too. He sat in despair, hardly noticing as the ninth gourd was opened. It held a juggler, and Nahl Bo, seeing only one small man, decided to make short work of him. He grabbed him by his topknot and was about to drag him to the door when the nimble fellow caught him by the legs and threw him headlong over his own back. Nahl Bo lay stunned while the juggler tied him hand and foot and stood him on his head, and his wife was glad to pay the fellow and send him away.

From the tenth gourd came a party of blind fortune-tellers tapping their way with long sticks. They offered to tell the family’s fortune, but things were far too desperate for that kind of help. The old men jingled their little bells and chanted verses to the four good spirits who stand at the four corners of the earth holding the world on their shoulders, and to the heavens that arch over and embrace the earth where the two meet at the far horizon. Then they threw their dice, and Nahl Bo, afraid they might foretell his death, quickly paid them and sent them off.

The next gourd was opened only a crack, so that they could decide whether it was wise to let out what was inside. But before they could decide, a voice like thunder roared from within, and a huge giant rose up, splitting the gourd as he came out. In his anger he seized poor Nahl Bo and threw him over his shoulders as if to carry him off. Nahl Bo’s wife begged tearfully for his release and gladly signed an order for the ransom, and the giant let the terrified man drop to the ground, nearly breaking his aching bones.

The carpenter no longer found it funny; it was getting far too dangerous. He demanded the rest of his pay, and they agreed to give it to him if he would open the last gourd. They hoped this one at least would be fit to cook into soup, because they had no food and no money left, and their unwanted guests had trampled the other gourds into uselessness.

The carpenter did as they asked, but he had sawed only a little way when the gourd split open as if it were rotten, and a terrible stench poured out and drove everyone from the place. Then came a gale so fierce that it blew down the buildings, and as they fell they caught fire from the heated floors. Nahl Bo stood by in helpless misery and watched the last of his property swept away.

So the seed that had brought good fortune to the honest, deserving brother brought ruin to the cruel and greedy Nahl Bo, who now had to live on the charity of the kind brother he had treated so badly.

About this tale

“Hyung Bo and Nahl Bo; or, The Swallow-King’s Rewards” is one of the stories in H. N. Allen’s Korean Tales (1889), which he describes on the title page as translated from Korean folklore. It is Allen’s version of the much-loved Korean tale of the good younger brother and the greedy elder one.

Allen fills the second half with a parade of Korean street life: tightrope walkers, hired mourners, dancing girls, fortune-tellers and a magistrate’s runners, each popping out of a gourd and demanding to be paid. This adaptation removes his mocking description of the carpenter’s appearance. The gourd visitors belong to Allen’s comic sequence, not a neutral account of every performer or religious practitioner. The miraculous wine and tobacco in the first gourd are fantasy; their promised effects are not health claims or instructions.

Read the original: Korean Tales (Project Gutenberg)

For older readers: includes severe hunger, abuse of a child, beatings, deliberate injury to birds, a woman assigned as a second wife and the destruction of a home.

Copying the action misses its purpose

Nahl Bo copies the splints but reverses the reason for them: he creates an injury in order to appear to repair it. The bird king listens to the bird’s account, so the visible bandages cannot hide what happened. The brothers’ care before the reward, rather than the mere performance of a helpful act, makes the difference.

The reward also exposes a limit in the narrator’s praise of Hyung Bo. His wife earns money, sells her shoes, helps mend the bird and advises him to let the gourds ripen. Yet when she objects to the fourth gourd’s arrival, he silences her. The second woman is presented as a gift, with no independent choice described. Those scenes complicate the picture of a wholly just household and deserve attention alongside his generosity.

Find the chances to stop

Make a short ledger of Nahl Bo’s opening costs, performers’ fees and the point when his property is pledged. Mark each occasion when he could stop, and the excuse he uses to continue. Then compare the two wives’ advice about the gourds: who listens, and what follows? Keep the magical wealth separate from the family’s earlier hard work; the story has already shown that poverty can persist despite kindness and effort.

Talk about it

• How did Hyung Bo help the little swallow?
• What was different about the way Nahl Bo “helped” a bird?
• Which gourd most changes your view of the brothers or their households, and why?

Related stories

• The Tongue-Cut Sparrow — a Japanese tale of a kind man, a greedy one and a bird’s gifts
• The King of the Sparrows — another Korean bird king
• The Story of the Old Man Who Made Withered Trees to Flower — a kind neighbor rewarded and a greedy one punished