Long ago, in a certain village, there lived a bad fox who occasionally came out and did some mischief. In the same village lived a proud man who always boasted, “No fox can ever disguise himself to me.” One day, when the man was going home, he saw a fox on the sand bar of the river. The fox put broad magnolia leaves on his head and turned himself into a woman. Then, she pulled duckweed from the river, rolled it up into the shape of a baby and held it in her arms. The man saw everything and became furious, “You dirty beast! You are trying to befool me, aren’t you? All right. Just see what happens.” He picked up a huge stone from the side of the road and threw it at the child, hitting it on the head and killing it with the single shot. The mother cried and fumed, “Give me back my child the way it was!” “Why? Are you not a fox?” he retorted.
Tricked into Becoming a Priest
The woman became angrier and she would not be pacified. The man waited for a long time but she did not turn into a fox again. He was finally convinced that he had done a shameful task. Although he apologised to her until he ran out of words, she couldn’t be convinced to forgive him so easily. “Then if nothing else does, I’ll become a priest to redeem for this,” said the man. Both of them went to a temple near by, where he explained everything to the priest and got his head shaved. When the priest shaved his head, it hurt him so much that he came back to his senses and looked around. The woman and her child had disappeared. Moreover, there was neither the priest nor the temple. The man’s hair which he thought had been shaved off, was actually chewed off by a fox.