The Unmannerly Tiger

The villagers called him “Mountain Uncle.” He was a splendid striped tiger who lived in the highlands of Kang Wen, the long province whose cliffs look out over the eastern sea. Hunters seldom saw him, and he boasted to his fellow tigers that though he had often been shot at, he had never been hit. Traps were no danger to him; he understood them well and scoffed at the tricks people used to catch him and take his precious skin.

In summer he stayed in the high hills and fed on fat deer. But in winter, when deep snow, biting winds and bitter cold kept people indoors, Mountain Uncle would come down to the villages and prowl around the stables, cattle pens and pigsties, hoping to drag off a young donkey, a fat calf or a piglet. Too often he managed it, so he was the terror of the countryside for miles around.

One autumn day, Mountain Uncle was roaming the lower hills. Though he was far from any village, he kept a sharp eye out for traps and hunters, but none seemed to be about. He was very hungry and hoped to find something to eat.

Coming around a great rock, Mountain Uncle suddenly saw, a few feet ahead on the path, what he took to be another big tiger, his very match. He stopped, lashed his tail fiercely in challenge, growled and got ready to spring. To his surprise, the other tiger did exactly the same. A great battle was coming, Mountain Uncle thought, and he welcomed it, sure of victory.

He made a tremendous leap and landed in a heap at the bottom of a pit, bruised and disappointed. There was no tiger anywhere. Instead, a heavy lid of logs had crashed shut over his head, leaving him in the dark. The old tiger was trapped at last! The hunter had hidden the pit with sticks and leaves, and on the posts above it, covered with vines and brushwood, he had hung a mirror. Mountain Uncle had often seen his own face reflected in the water when he stooped to drink, but this time there was no water, so he was fooled into thinking a real tiger wanted to fight him.

By and by, a Buddhist monk came along, a man who believed in being kind to every living creature. He heard a creature groaning, so he pulled open the trap, raised the lid and saw Mountain Uncle at the bottom, licking a bruised paw.

“Please, kind sir, help me out,” the tiger begged. “I’m hurt.”

So the monk lifted a log and lowered it into the pit to make a ramp, and the tiger climbed up and out. Mountain Uncle thanked the monk at great length. “Thank you, sir, with all my heart for getting me out of that fix,” he said. “All the same, I am very hungry, so I must eat you up.”

The monk was astonished and indignant and protested against such shameful ingratitude. It was very bad manners, to say the least, and quite contrary to the law of the mountains. He asked a big tree to judge between them.

The spirit in the tree spoke through its rustling leaves. Its verdict: let the man go, for the tiger was thankless and rude.

Mountain Uncle was not satisfied, especially since the monk was unusually plump and would make a very good dinner. Still, he let the man appeal a second time, now to a big rock.

“Honored Mountain Uncle, the monk is in the right, and you are entirely wrong,” said the spirit in the rock. “Your master, the Mountain Spirit, who rides the green bull and the spotted horse to punish his enemies, will surely punish you if you eat this monk. What kind of messenger for the Mountain Lord would gobble up the very man who pulled him out of a trap? Even thinking of it is dreadfully rude.”

Mountain Uncle hung his head in shame, yet hunger still burned in his eyes. So, to make quite certain he got away, the monk suggested that the toad be the judge, and the tiger agreed.

With his gold-ringed eyes, the toad had a very wise look. Unlike the tree and the rock, who had answered at once, he thought for a long, long time. The monk’s heart sank, while the tiger worked his jaws as if he could already taste his dinner. He felt sure Old Speckled Back would decide in his favor.

“First I need to look at this trap,” said the toad, looking as solemn as a magistrate. So all three of them leaped, hopped or walked to the trap. The tiger, being quickest, arrived ahead of the others, exactly as the toad had hoped, for he was the monk’s friend. Besides, Old Speckled Back was busy looking for a crack in the rocks nearby.

While the toad and the tiger studied the matter, the monk slipped away and ran to safety inside the monastery gates. When Old Speckled Back at last gave his verdict, for the man and not the tiger, he hopped straight into a crack in the rock the moment he finished. From deep inside, he called the tiger an unmannerly brute and an ungrateful beast and dared him to do his worst.

Mountain Uncle was so wild with rage and hunger that all his cunning turned to foolishness. He scratched and tore at the stone, trying to reach the toad, but Speckled Back just laughed from his hiding place. The hotter the tiger’s temper grew, the more he lost his wits. He jammed his nose into the crack and scraped it on the rough rock so hard and so long that in the end the great beast wore himself out and died there.

In the tale’s account of the hunter’s reward, When the hunter came by, he was amazed at what he found, but he was glad to grow rich by selling the skin, bones and claws, since no prize fetches a better price in Korea than a tiger. As for the toad, he made sure that his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren all heard how he outwitted old Mountain Uncle.

About this story

“The Unmannerly Tiger” comes from Korean Fairy Tales by William Elliot Griffis, published in 1922. It belongs to a family of tales told all over Asia, in which a rescued animal turns on its rescuer and a series of judges is asked to decide the case.

In Korean folklore the tiger is often the servant of the Mountain Spirit, and he can be both fearsome and foolish. Here the smallest judge, the toad, proves the cleverest of all.

Read the original: Korean Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: includes a threat to eat the monk and the tiger injuring himself until he dies.

The third judge changes the situation

The tree and rock condemn ingratitude, but the tiger still intends to eat the monk. The toad’s advantage is practical: inspecting the trap creates time and space for the monk to get away. His judgment succeeds because the endangered person can leave, not because he finds a new argument that changes the tiger’s mind.

Words and consequences

Make a row for each judge. Record the verdict and what happens to the monk immediately afterward. Then explain why the final row differs. The tiger’s fatal fury also makes the ending harsher than a simple lesson in good manners.

Talk about it

• How did the hunter trick Mountain Uncle into the pit?
• Why did the tree and the rock say the tiger was wrong?
• How did the toad help the monk escape?

You may also like

• The Tiger, the Brahman and the Jackal — a similar Indian rescue-and-judgment tale
• The Rabbit’s Eyes — another small animal that outwits a powerful one
• The Sneezing Colossus — another Korean tale from Griffis