Tales for Sleep: Changed by the River
Tonight, four Korean tales from James S. Gale's Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies (1913), his translation of Im Bang and Yi Ryuk: "The Old Man Who Became a Fish," "The Wild-Cat Woman," "The Soldier of Kang-Wha," and "The Geomancer." Settle in, and listen.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
An old man of nearly a hundred, burning with fever, asks to be carried to the river that runs before his house — and slips into the water and is changed, becoming a great flatfish that swims away into the deep sea. A duplicate wife, held fast until the cocks crew, falls and changes into a wild cat, and escapes through the door unharmed. A soldier of Kang-wha, alone in midwinter, calls butterflies out of scraps of silk to cheer his wife — and his village alone is spared when the island falls. And a geomancer, fed a bowl of white gruel by a mourner who has not yet found a burial site, repays the kindness with a perfect site in the hills, whose luck a rival later misreads. One honest note on the telling: the wild cat escapes unharmed, and the geomancer's bereavement is background only — a mourner, a funeral not yet arranged, and a grave site found.
The tales:
00:19 — The Old Man Who Became a Fish
04:06 — The Wild-Cat Woman
07:57 — The Soldier of Kang-Wha
10:18 — The Geomancer
Source: James S. Gale (1863–1937), translator, Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies, from Im Bang and Yi Ryuk (J. M. Dent & Sons / E. P. Dutton, 1913), Project Gutenberg #51002 — public domain; Gale's English performed as printed. Gate record: catalogue/korea-canon.md; all four tales passed on full read and were benched for a later part.
Narrated by Orson · Tales for Sleep
A dry-voice telling — no music, by the Sleep Season's design.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
