The Kingdom of the Ogres

In the land of Annam there once lived a man named Su who traded across the seas. One voyage a fierce storm suddenly drove his ship onto a faraway coast. The country was all hills cut by deep ravines and thick with green growth, but along the slopes he could make out what looked like houses. So he packed some food and went ashore.

As soon as he was among the hills, he saw cave mouths on both sides of him, packed close together like a row of beehives. He stopped and peered into one of them. Inside sat two ogres with teeth like spear-points and eyes like blazing lamps, tearing at a deer. Su was terrified and turned to run, but the ogres had already seen him. They grabbed him and hauled him into the cave. They grunted to each other in beastly sounds and began to pull off his clothes, ready to eat him.

In a hurry Su pulled out a bag of bread and dried meat and held it out. The ogres split it between them and gobbled it, and they seemed to like it. They rummaged through the bag again, but he waved his hand to show that there was nothing left. “Let me go!” he said. “On my ship I have frying pans and cooking pots, vinegar and spices. With them I could cook your food for you.”

The ogres did not understand his words and still threatened him. So he tried to explain with gestures, until at last they seemed to catch on. They went with him to the ship, and he carried his cooking gear back to the cave, gathered brushwood, made a fire and cooked what was left of the deer. When it was done just right, he gave them some, and the two creatures wolfed it down with enormous pleasure.

Then they went out and rolled a huge stone across the cave mouth. Before long they came back with another deer. Su skinned it, fetched fresh water, washed the meat and cooked several kettles full. Suddenly a whole crowd of ogres came in and ate everything he had cooked, chattering excitedly as they ate. They kept pointing at the kettle, which seemed too small to them. Three or four days later one of the ogres came dragging an enormous cooking pot on his back, and from then on that was the only pot they used.

Now the ogres flocked around Su with wolves, deer and antelope for him to cook, and when the meat was ready they would call him to eat with them. A few weeks went by like this, and they came to trust him so much that they let him go wherever he liked. Su listened to the noises they made and learned what they meant, and soon he could speak the ogre language himself. This delighted the ogres. They brought him a young ogre-girl and made her his wife. She gave him treasures and fruit to win him over, and as time passed the two grew very fond of each other.

One day all the ogres got up very early, and each hung a string of shining pearls around his neck. They told Su to be sure to cook a great deal of meat. He asked his wife what it was all about. “Today is a great feast day,” she said. “We have invited the great king to a banquet.” Then she said to the others, “The merchant has no string of pearls!” So each ogre gave him five pearls, and his wife added ten more, until he had fifty in all. His wife threaded them and hung the necklace around his neck, and every one of those pearls was worth several hundred ounces of silver at the very least.

Su cooked the meat and then set out with the whole band to welcome the great king. They came to a wide cave with a huge block of stone in the middle, flat and smooth as a table, ringed with stone seats. A leopard-skin covered the seat of honor, and deerskins covered the rest. Several dozen ogres sat around the cave in rows.

All at once a terrible wind arose, spinning the dust into pillars, and a monster in the shape of an ogre appeared. The ogres all crowded out of the cave in great excitement to greet him. The great king rushed into the cave, sat down with his legs stretched out, and looked about with eyes as round as an eagle’s. The whole band followed him in and stood on either side of him, gazing up at him with their arms crossed over their chests to do him honor.

The great king nodded, looked around and asked, “Are all the people of the Wo-Me hills here?” The whole band said they were. Then he noticed Su. “Where does he come from?” he asked. Su’s wife answered for him, and everyone praised his skill as a cook. Two ogres brought in the cooked meat and spread it on the table. The great king ate until he could eat no more, praised it with his mouth full, and said that from now on they must always serve him food like this.

Then he looked at Su and asked, “Why is your necklace so short?” He took ten pearls from his own necklace, as big and round as musket balls. Su’s wife quickly accepted them for him and hung them around his neck, and Su crossed his arms like the ogres and said his thanks. Then the great king left, flashing away on the wind like lightning.

In time heaven gave Su three children, two boys and a girl. All of them had human shape and did not look like their mother. As they learned to talk, their father taught them the speech of human beings. They grew up so strong that they could run over the hills as if over flat ground.

One day Su’s wife went off with one of the boys and the girl and stayed away half the day. A brisk north wind was blowing, and a longing for home stirred in Su’s heart. He took his other son by the hand and went down to the shore. His old ship was still lying there. He climbed aboard with the boy, and in a day and a night he was back in Annam.

When he got home he took two pearls off his necklace and sold them for a great deal of gold, so that he could keep a handsome household. He named his son Panther. At fourteen the boy could lift thirty hundredweight with ease, but he was rough by nature and loved to fight. The general of Annam, amazed at his courage, made him a colonel. He served so well in putting down a rebellion that by eighteen he was already a general of the second rank.

Around this time another merchant was blown ashore by a storm on the island of Wo-Me. When he landed, a young man came up to him and asked in astonishment, “Aren’t you from the Middle Kingdom?” The merchant explained how he had been shipwrecked, and the youth led him to a small cave in a hidden valley, brought him deer meat to eat and talked with him. He said his father had come from Annam too, and it turned out that his father was an old acquaintance of the merchant.

“We must wait for the north wind,” said the youth. “Then I will come and see you off, and I will give you a message of greeting for my father and my brother.”

“Why don’t you come along and find your father yourself?” the merchant asked.

“My mother is not from the Middle Kingdom,” said the youth. “She is different in speech and looks, so it would not do.”

One day the north wind blew hard. The youth came and walked the merchant to his ship, and as they parted he told him not to forget a single word of his message.

When the merchant got back to Annam, he went to General Panther’s mansion and told him everything. As Panther listened to the news of his brother, he sobbed with grief. He asked for leave and sailed out to sea with two soldiers. Suddenly a typhoon struck, whipping the waves sky-high. The ship capsized and Panther was thrown into the sea. Some creature seized him and flung him onto a beach where there seemed to be houses. The creature looked like an ogre, so Panther spoke to it in the ogre tongue. Surprised, the ogre asked who he was, and Panther told his whole story.

The ogre was pleased. “Wo-Me is my old home,” he said, “but it lies about eight thousand miles from here. This is the kingdom of the poison dragons.” He fetched a boat and had Panther sit in it, and then he swam behind it, pushing it through the water so that it cut the waves like an arrow. It took the whole night, but in the morning a coast came into view to the north, and on the beach a young man stood keeping watch. Panther knew his brother at once. He jumped ashore, and the two clasped hands and wept. Panther turned to thank the ogre, but the ogre was already gone.

Panther asked about his mother and sister and heard that both were well and content. He wanted to go to them with his brother, but his brother told him to wait and went off alone. Soon he returned with their mother and sister, and when the two of them saw Panther, they wept with joy. Panther begged them to come home with him to Annam.

“I am afraid people would laugh at me because of the way I look,” his mother said.

“I am a high officer,” Panther replied. “No one would dare to insult you.”

So they all went down to the boat with him. A good wind filled the sails and they flew home as fast as an arrow. On the third day they reached land. Everyone they met was terrified and ran away, so Panther took off his cloak and divided it among the three of them so that they could cover themselves.

When they got home and the mother saw her husband, she started scolding him furiously for leaving without a word to her. The members of his household who came to greet the master’s wife did so trembling with fear. Panther advised his mother to learn the language of the Middle Kingdom, wear silk and get used to the household’s food. She agreed, though she and her daughter had men’s clothes made for themselves. In time the brother and sister became more familiar with life in their father’s country. Panther’s brother was named Leopard, and his sister was called Ogrechild. Both were tremendously strong.

Panther did not like having a brother with no schooling, so he made him study. Leopard was very gifted and understood a book after one reading, but he had no wish to become a scholar. Shooting and riding were what he loved best. So he made his career as a soldier, rose to high rank, and in the end married the daughter of a distinguished official.

It took a long time for Ogrechild to find a husband, because every suitor was afraid of the mother-in-law he would get. At last she married one of her brother’s officers. She could draw the strongest bow and hit the smallest bird from a hundred paces, and her arrows never fell without striking home. Whenever her husband went to war she went with him, and it was largely thanks to her that he became a general in the end.

Leopard was a field marshal by thirty, and his mother rode with him on his campaigns. When a dangerous enemy came near, she put on armor and took a knife in her hand to face him in her son’s place, and not one enemy who met her failed to run from her in terror. For her courage the emperor gave her the title “The Superwoman.”

Where this story comes from

“The Kingdom of the Ogres” is chapter LVI of Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book, translated by Frederick H. Martens (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1921). Wilhelm placed it among his ghost stories, though it reads more like a sea adventure.

Wilhelm’s note associates these creatures with rakshasas and mentions Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, as a legendary setting. This is a claim about imagined beings, not a description of any real people. The tale’s Annam and Middle Kingdom references should not be collapsed into a precise map of its fantastic island voyages. In this tale the ogres show loyalty and affection as well as threatening behavior, and the mother ends up honored by the emperor. This adaptation removes the source’s suggestion that lighter skin makes the children more human; their learning and family bonds do not depend on skin color.

Read the original: The Chinese Fairy Book (Project Gutenberg)

Best for ages 9–12 with discussion: shipwreck, threats to eat a captive, an imposed marriage, family abandonment, prejudice and warfare. The mother’s appearance is not a measure of her humanity or courage.

Reading the story closely

Language changes who can act. Su first negotiates through food and gesture, then learns the ogres’ speech; Panther later uses that language to gain rescue far from home. The mother helps Su enter her community through the pearl necklace, while Panther later offers his status to protect her in his. These are reciprocal forms of assistance, even though their societies remain unequal.

Compare the two departures: Su leaves secretly with one child, while Panther asks the remaining family to come together. What information and choice does each person have? The mother’s anger at reunion deserves the same attention as the sons’ military promotions. Her later honors do not erase the abandonment or prove that everyone has overcome their prejudice.

Talk about it

• How does Su save himself when the ogres first catch him?
• Why does the ogre mother worry about going to Annam, and how does Panther answer her?
• Su’s children grow up strong and brave. How does each of them use that strength later on?

Related stories

• The Flying Ogre — another Wilhelm ghost story about an ogre
• The Panther — a very different Wilhelm tale with a beast at the door
• The Maiden Who Was Stolen Away — the next ghost story in Wilhelm’s book