Week 9 Reading Notes Part B: The Golden Squash

The Golden Squash

There were two old men living in the mountains, one was kind at heart and the other was greedy.  The king old man had a bird land in his garden with a broken wing.  He nurtures it back to health, lets it free, and it comes back with a seed that it says will do him well.  He grows the seed and it produces a gigantic squash.  He god five men to help him carry it to his house, but when he tries to eat it he finds that it is made of pure gold and because of this he is now rich.  He uses his wealth to help the sick and poor.  The greedy neighbor, envious of the kind man, gets a bow and shoots a bird's leg when it is near his garden.  He then nurtures it back to health pretending it is out of the kindness of his heart, and when the bird gets better it brings him a seed that bears a squash of similar size.  He gets five men to carry it to his house just like the kind old man, but when he opens it, a scary old man jumps out of it.  He tells him he has been sent from the king to weigh him, grabs him by the neck, weighs him, and says, "You are far too light and no use at all," and proceeds to cut his head off.  The end.

Large Squash sourced via Wikipedia

I liked this story, not just because of the message it bears, but also because of the absolutely crazy ending it has.  It inspires me not just to write about this message that many people from the modern era need to hear about the bad things about greed, but also to write something that stuns the reader like I was.  It was a strange, but good feeling to think the squash was going to have spiders or be rotten or something, but ends up having a man jump out of it and cut his head off because he doesn't weigh much!

Bibliography:

Tibetan Folk Tales: The Golden Squash by A.L. Shelton