Penrhyn Wingfield Coussens

“ Many years ago there lived a poor old bamboo-cutter, whose great sorrow it was that Heaven had sent no child to cheer his wife and himself in their old age. Every morning he went into the woods in search of the lithe bamboo, which he would split lengthwise or cut into joints, and these he would take home with him, and his wife would turn them into useful or ornamental articles for the household, and sell them. ”

“ Now travel in those days was not easy, but full of danger and difficulty, and the first knight lacked the courage to go to India. So he went to a temple in one of the large cities of Japan, and bribed the head priest to let him take away a stone bowl which was on the altar there. He wrapped this up very carefully, and after waiting for two years, took it to the old bamboo-cutter. ”

“ At length the five knights returned to their homes, where they tried to forget the Princess Moonlight, but this they could not do, so they again came to the bamboo-cutter's house, and this time they asked the old man to tell them if the Princess were determined never to see any man. ”

“ And with the child came good fortune, for from this time the old man found gold and precious stones in the notches of the bamboos when he cut them up, so that before long he was rich enough to retire, and he built a fine house in which they all lived very happily. ”

“ They besought the old man to intercede for them, but he answered that he was not her real father, and that he could not order her to obey him, and also that he would not ask her to do anything she did not wish to do. ”

“ The task of the third knight was to get the skin of the fire-rat, whose virtue was that no fire could harm it. Now he had a friend who lived in China, and to him he wrote, offering him a very large sum of money if he would procure that which he desired. ”