The Snail Bride

There was once a young farmer who had no parents, no wife and no money. He lived alone in a tiny house at the edge of the village and worked a scrap of rented field from morning till night.

In the evenings he came home to a cold, dark house. He lit the fire himself, cooked a little rice himself, and ate it alone, sitting on the floor with nobody to talk to. Through the walls he could hear his neighbours laughing over their suppers, children squabbling, husbands and wives teasing each other. Then he would lie down and look at the ceiling until he fell asleep.

One day he was hoeing the field under a hot sun. He straightened up, wiped his forehead and sighed. “I grow all this rice,” he said out loud, to nobody, “and who am I going to eat it with?”

“With me, of course,” said a voice. “Who else would you eat it with?”

The farmer spun round. There was no one there. He searched along the edge of the field, between the furrows and under the leaves, and at last, in the wet mud, he found a single river snail, its shell gleaming.

He laughed at himself for being foolish. But he picked up the snail anyway, carried it home and dropped it into the big clay water jar in his kitchen.

“There,” he said, putting the lid back on. “At least now I have someone to talk to.” And he laughed again, a little sadly, and went to bed.

Supper on the table

The next evening he came home from the field, tired and hungry, and stopped in the doorway. On the floor of his little room stood a low table, and on the table were a bowl of steaming rice, a pot of soup and three little side dishes.

He looked around. No one was there. He ate it all, and it was the best meal he had ever had.

The fire in the stove was still warm. The water jar stood in its corner with its lid on, exactly as he had left it.

He went next door and asked his neighbour if she had cooked for him. She stared at him and said she had enough mouths to feed already. He asked the woman across the road, and the old man at the end of the lane. Nobody knew anything about it.

The same thing happened the next day, and the day after that. Every evening a hot supper was waiting for him, and every evening the house was empty. At last he decided to find out who his secret cook was. One morning he pretended to set off for the field, then crept back and hid behind the kitchen door.

Around noon the lid of the water jar lifted. Out of the snail shell climbed a young woman, as lovely as anyone he had ever seen. She lit the fire, washed the rice and set about cooking. When the table was ready she turned back toward the jar.

She stood for a moment in the middle of the kitchen, stretching like someone who has been asleep, and looked around the bare little room with a small, fond smile, as if it were exactly where she wanted to be.

The farmer watched from behind the door, hardly daring to breathe. She moved about his poor little kitchen as if she had always lived there. She hummed softly as she worked. Once she lifted the lid of the pot to taste the soup, and smiled to herself, and he thought he had never seen anything so lovely in his life.

The farmer jumped out and caught her sleeve. “Don’t go,” he said. “Stay and be my wife.”

She gave a little cry and tried to pull away toward the jar, but he held on. Her sleeve was cool and slightly damp, like river water.

The snail woman looked troubled. “I cannot yet,” she said gently. “The time is not right. If you wait a little longer, I can stay with you properly. Please, be patient.”

Too soon

But the farmer had been lonely for too long. He would not let her go back into the shell. He begged and pleaded until she gave in, and they began to live together as husband and wife.

“How long?” he asked. “A month? A year? I have waited my whole life already. I cannot wait any more.” The snail woman looked at him for a long time, and something sorrowful passed over her face, as if she could see a long way ahead and did not like what she saw.

For a while they were very happy.

The cold house was warm now. When he came home from the field, there was a light in the window and someone waiting for him. They ate together at the little table, and he told her about his day, and she laughed at his stories. The neighbours wondered where the shy, lonely farmer had found such a wife, but he only smiled and would not say. She worked beside him, and the little house was full of talk and laughter. Then one day she went out to take lunch to the field, and a high official passing along the road saw her. He was so struck by her beauty that he ordered his servants to bring her to him to be his wife.

She walked along the road between the paddies with the lunch basket on her head, humming the same soft tune she had hummed in the kitchen, and the sun shone on her hair.

When the servants came for her, the snail bride tried to send them away. She gave them her ring and said, “Tell your master this is all you found.” When they came back, she gave them her hairpin. Then the ribbon from her jacket. Then her outer coat. Each time she said, “Tell him there was nothing here but this.” But the official would not be put off, and in the end his men carried her away.

As the servants led her down the road, she looked back once toward the little house and the field where her husband was working, and then she was gone round the bend.

Back in the field, the farmer waited for his lunch, and waited, and at last walked home to see what had kept her. He found the house empty and the lunch basket lying on its side in the road.

The bluebird and the comb

The farmer ran after them, but what could a poor farmer do against an official? He paced the road outside the official’s house day after day, unable to eat or sleep, until at last his heart gave out and he died.

He went to the gate and begged to see his wife, and the guards laughed and drove him off. He went back the next day, and the next. He stood outside the high wall calling her name until his voice was gone. The neighbours brought him food, and he could not eat it.

He did not stay dead. He became a bluebird, and the bluebird flew to the official’s house and sang outside the window where his wife was kept. And the snail bride, shut away and grieving, also died, and she became a wooden comb, the kind every woman in old Korea kept close by her.

People say that the song the bluebird sang to her is still sung today.

Happier endings

Not every teller is so cruel. In some versions there is no official at all, and the farmer and the snail bride simply live happily together, which tellers love for its gentle, homely feeling. In others the official does take her, but the husband outwits him, wins her back and is even given a government post. And in one sad variant, it is the man’s mother who finds the snail and throws it on the compost heap, not knowing what it is.

Talk about it

Why do you think the snail bride asked him to wait? Was the farmer wrong to rush, or just lonely? Which ending do you prefer, and why might a storyteller choose the sad one?

Words to know

Ureong-i (우렁이) is a freshwater river snail. Gaksi (각시) is an old word for a young bride. Parangsae (파랑새) is a bluebird. Chambit (참빗) is a fine-toothed bamboo comb.