Pigling and Her Proud Sister

Pear Blossom was a little Korean girl who lost her mother suddenly. When her father, Kang Wa, a magistrate high in office, married again, his new wife was a proud widow with a daughter named Violet. Mother and daughter both hated housework, so they made Pear Blossom clean the rice, cook the meals and tend the kitchen fire. They treated her horribly, never spoke a kind word to her and called her Pigling, or Little Pig, which often made her cry.

Complaining to her father did no good, for he was always busy. He smoked his yard-long pipe and played checkers for hours, and he seemed to care more about having his big white coat properly starched and glossy than about his daughter’s happiness. His linen had to be beaten with a laundry club until it shone like frost, and when he set off for the government office he was spotless white from head to foot, except for his wide black horsehair hat.

Poor Pigling had to do all the washing, starching and glossing on top of the kitchen work, and the rat-a-tat-tat of her laundry stick could often be heard in the outer room long after midnight, when her heartless stepmother and stepsister had gone to sleep.

A great festival was coming to the city, and for days the household got ready, preparing the father’s best robe and hat and the women’s finery, so that they could go out and see the king and the royal procession.

Pigling longed to see the parade too. But her cruel stepmother set before her a huge straw sack of unhulled rice and a big cracked water jar, and told her that she must husk every grain and fill the jar to the brim with water from the well before she dared set foot in the street.

Husk three bushels of rice by hand and fill a leaking jar! Pigling cried bitterly. How could it ever be done?

As she sat there, unhappily opening the sack to spread the rice out on mats, she heard a whir and rush of wings, and down came a flock of pigeons. They landed on her head and shoulders, then hopped to the floor and set to work busily with beaks and claws. In a few minutes the rice lay in a clean, white, shining heap, and the husks, which they had pulled away with their pink toes, lay in a separate pile. Then, with a great deal of chattering and cooing, the flock flew away.

Pigling was so astonished by the birds’ wonderful work that she hardly knew how to thank them enough. But there was still the cracked jar to fill. Just as she picked up the bucket, out of the fire hole crawled a sooty black imp named Tokgabi.

“Don’t cry,” he squeaked. “I’ll mend the crack and fill the jar for you.” He plugged the crack with clay and poured a dozen buckets of water from the well into the jar until it was brimming over on every side. Then the imp bowed and crawled back into the chimney flues before the amazed girl could even thank him.

So Pigling had time to put on her plain, clean, snow-white clothes, and off she went to see the royal banners and the king’s grand procession of thousands of loyal men.

Next, the stepmother and her favorite daughter planned a picnic on the mountain. Food was prepared, and Pigling had to work so hard starching their jackets, long skirts, belts and sashes that she nearly dropped with tiredness. Instead of thanking her, her stepmother told her she could not go out until she had hoed every weed in the garden and pulled up all the grass between the stones of the path.

Once more the poor girl’s face was wet with tears. She was left at home alone, while the others went off in fine clothes, with plenty to eat and drink, for a day of fun.

As she cried, a huge black cow came by, and its big gentle eyes seemed to shine with pity for the kitchen drudge. In ten mouthfuls the cow ate up all the weeds, and with its hoofs and lips it soon cleared the grass from the stone path.

Drying her tears, Pigling followed the wonderful animal across the meadows and into the woods, where she found the most delicious fruit she had ever seen. She tasted it and feasted until she was full, and then she went home.

When her jealous stepsister heard about the amazing black cow, she made up her mind to have a forest feast of her own. So on the next holiday she stayed at home and let Pigling go to see the royal parade. Pigling could not understand why she was let off her pots and kettles, even for a few hours, and she was even more surprised when her stepmother gave her a string of coins to spend on treats.

Thanking her, Pigling put on her best clothes and was soon in the main street of the city, enjoying the merry sights and the happy crowds. There were tightrope dancers, wandering bands with drums and flutes, conjurers and clowns with their tricks and castanets, singing girls striking graceful poses and fun of every kind. Dozens of boys were selling honey candy, barley sugar and sweets. At the eating house Pigling had a fine dinner of fried fish, rice with red peppers, turnips, dried persimmons, roasted chestnuts and candied orange, and she felt as happy as a queen.

The selfish stepsister had stayed home not to spare Pigling any work but to see the wonderful cow. When the black cow came and found its friend gone and nothing to do, it walked off into the forest. The stepsister followed its tracks at once, but the cow decided to go very fast and through very unpleasant places.

Soon the girl found herself in a swamp, wet, muddy and full of brambles. Still hoping for the wonderful fruit, she kept going until she was worn out and the cow had disappeared. Then, muddy and bedraggled, she tried to find her way back, but the thorny bushes tore her clothes and scratched her hands and face so badly that when she finally dragged herself home, exhausted, she was in rags and her beauty was gone.

But Pigling, rosy and round-cheeked, looked so lovely at the festival that a young man of good family from the south, who was visiting the capital, was struck by her beauty. Since he was looking for a wife, he set out to find where she lived. Then he hired a go-between, who visited both families and arranged the engagement and the wedding.

It was a grand wedding. The groom, Su-wen, wore robes of white and black silk and a rich horsehair cap showing that he was a yangban, a gentleman. On his chest, crossed by a silver-studded belt, was a golden square embroidered with cranes flying above the waves, the sign of a government official. He was tall, handsome and very well educated, deeply read in the classics and quite famous for writing poems.

Pear Blossom, as everyone called her now, looked charming in her robe of brocade, with long undersleeves peeping out from her inner dress of snow-white silk. She wore dainty red leather shoes that curled up at the toes, an openwork silver sash, a long high-waisted skirt with the edges of her silk robes showing prettily at the neck and a silver wedding ring on her finger. She looked as lovely as a princess.

Besides her wedding dowry, her father asked Pear Blossom what special present she would like. When she told him, he laughed heartily, but he gave it to her all the same. The narrator closes by imagining that in the private room of Pear Blossom, now Mrs. Su-wen, there stands a clay figure of a black cow, molded and baked from the earth of her home province, and pigeons love to flutter round a pear tree that bursts into bloom every spring and showers the ground with snowy, sweet-smelling petals.

About this story

“Pigling and Her Proud Sister” is William Elliot Griffis’s Korean Cinderella, from his Korean Fairy Tales. The pattern is familiar from Europe, with a cruel stepmother, a mistreated daughter, impossible tasks and helpers who appear just in time, with pigeons, a household imp and a black cow giving Griffis’s telling its particular shape. His descriptions should not be treated as a complete account of Korean custom.

The helpers here are pigeons, a sooty tokgabi imp from the kitchen flue and a kindly black cow, and the reward is a marriage to a scholar-official. Folklorists know a related Korean tale as the story of Kongjwi and Patjwi.

Read the original: Korean Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: includes family neglect, bullying, exhausting child labour and injuries to the stepsister.

The helpers repair more than chores

Working harder cannot fill a cracked jar. Tokgabi repairs the crack before adding water, exposing the unfairness of a task designed to keep Pear Blossom home. Her father’s concern for his shining coat makes his neglect part of the problem, not simply a background absence.

At the end, the clay cow gives remembered help a place in her new home. The wedding changes her status, but her chosen gift points back to the creatures that relieved her isolation.

Distinguish work from obstruction

List the rice, jar and garden tasks. Which require time, and which cannot succeed without changing the conditions? Design one fair household arrangement that would have let Pear Blossom attend the festival without supernatural help.

Talk about it

• Who helped Pigling with her impossible tasks?
• Why did the stepsister’s trip into the forest go so badly?
• Why do you think Pear Blossom asked for a clay cow as her present?

More stories like this

• Fancha and the Magpie — another Korean tale of a girl helped by a bird
• A Frog for a Husband — kindness rewarded in another Griffis tale
• Hyung-bo and Nahl-bo — a good brother and a greedy one