The Monkey Groom

Long, long ago there lives on a farm a mother and her three daughters. As the three daughters hated farming, every day the mother went out into the fields to work alone. The fields around the farm were continually overrun with weeds.

One day the mother was again out pulling the weeks from the millet fields. It was hard work and she repeated one thing to herself over and over again. "Oh, this is hard work. Those no good daughters of mine never help. If there was someone who would only lend a hand I'd give them one of my daughters."

Suddenly there appeared a monkey. He said "If I help you with your weeding will you give me one of your daughters? I wont make her a farmer and I'll take good care of her." The mother replied, "Alright! If you help me clear the weeds you can have one of my daughters."

The monkey leapt for joy. From there on the monkey would come to the farm everyday and pull weeds from dawn till dusk.

When he had finished the monkey reminded the mother, "I believe that you must now give me one of your daughters," and with that in mind the monkey headed back into the mountains.

"Will one of the three of you become the bride of that monkey for me?" the mother cried. "We'd rather die that take a monkey for a husband," they all declined.

Several days went by and the youngest daughter watching her mother worry herself to death said, "Mother, I will go to the monkey to be his bride."

The mother was torn between tears and laughter. "I am very unhappy to send you away as the bride of a monkey, but in this way I can keep my promise to him."

When the New Years celebrations for that year had finished, the daughter went to the home of her monkey groom to be his bride. Shortly as the first signs of spring arrived, the young bride told her monkey husband, "For the spring festival we must go and pay our respects to my mother with a gift of thinly rolled rice cakes." The monkey made the rice cakes, threw it on his back and they set off for her mother's house.

On the way there they came across a farm pond ringed with beautiful peach and cherry trees in full blossom. The bride asked the monkey, "Please would you get me a branch of cherry blossoms." Immediately the monkey left into the cherry tree. When the moneky was about to climb down from the tree with the branch, the daughter called to him again, "Oh my monkey, please get me one from the neighboring peach tree too."

The monkey leapt across onto a branch in the peach tree. Now this would have usually been no problem for the monkey, but this time he was carrying a heavy load on his back. His body spun around and he fell "ker-plunk" into the pond.

It is said that the monkey never came to the surface again and the daughter returned home alone to the home of her mother.

The good monkey coming to an unfortunate end makes a sad story, but this kind of story is not uncommon amongst Japanese folk tales.