A Folktale from Formosa

 

A story from Formosa (now Taiwan) recorded in the Folk Lore Journal 1887 (Vol 5 p 139) tells howseven brothers, banished from their home, encountered some unsettling ‘littlepeople’ on their journey through the forest. 

 

The exiles went forthinto the depth of the forest, and in their wanderings after a new land theycrossed a small clearing, in which a little girl, about a span* in height, wasseated peeling [sweet] potatoes. ‘Little sister,’ they queried, ‘how come you here?where is your home?’  ‘I am not of homesnor parents,’ she replied. Her surprised questioners then asked if she coulddirect them to a pathway;  she answeredafter the following enigmatic manner: ‘If you find your swords girded on theright you are the proper road; if you find them on the left you are goingastray.’

            The puzzled brothers shook their heads and again enteredthe thick forest. After them came the voice of the little girl singing,

            ‘You think that I am fatherless, motherless, small,

            Devoid of that wisdom which parents install;

            Yet was I when fathers and mothers were not,

            And will be when mankind itself is forgot.’

Theyhad not gone far when they saw a little man cutting canes, and farther on tothe right a curious-looking house, in front of which sat two diminutive womencombing their hair. Things looked so queer that the travellers hesitated aboutapproaching nearer, but eager to find a way out of the forest they determinedin their extremity to question the strange people. The two women, wheninterrogated, turned sharply round, showing eyes of a flashing red; thenlooking upward, their eyes became dull and white, and they immediately ran intothe house, the doors and windows of which at once vanished, the whole taking onthe form and appearance of a large, isolated boulder. 

 

* ‘span’: the distancebetween the thumb and little finger of a outspread hand.

Picture credit:

'Goblins' by Brian Froud: https://www.ferniebrae.com/brian-froud