The Husband of the Rat's Daughter

The Husband of the Rat's Daughter is a Japanese fairy tale. Andrew Lang included it in The Brown Fairy Book. It is Aarne-Thompson type 2031C, a chain tale or cumulative tale. Another story of this type is The Mouse Turned into a Maid.[1]

Synopsis

Two rats had a remarkably beautiful daughter. In some variants, the father would have been happy to marry her to a rat of finer family, but the mother did not want her daughter to marry a mere rat; in others, they both agreed that she must marry the greatest being in the world. They offered her to the sun, telling him they wanted a son-in-law who was greater than all. The sun told them that he could not take advantage of their ignorance: the cloud, which blotted out his face, was greater. So they asked the cloud instead. The cloud told them that the wind freely blew it about. They asked the wind. The wind told them that the wall could easily stop it. They asked the wall. The wall told them that a rat could reduce it to powder with its teeth. So they married her to a rat.

gollark: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/496350845609181185/565270068254998528/IMG_20190409_212056.jpgI had a spare Raspberry Pi and small HDMI screen. With a lot of fiddling around, it now displays a bunch of RSS feeds so I can read about how horribly Brexit is going in real time.
gollark: Probably depends on what level of schooling it is.
gollark: Lessons at school.
gollark: It's also open-source and moddable with Lua.
gollark: Game recommendation: The Powder Toy (https://powdertoy.co.uk/)It's a pretty complex falling sand game with loads of depth (some people have made computers out of somewhat ridiculous exploits of some electricity mechanics).

See also

References
  1. D. L. Ashliman, "The Mouse Who Was to Marry the Sun: fables of Aarne–Thompson type 2031C"


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