Once upon a time, there was a village deep in the mountains.
The people living in the village were friendly and close to each other.
There was a woodcutter in this village,
and though he isn't very smart, he is humble.
The woodcutter lived with his father and mother
in peace and happiness.
The woodcutter looked just like his father, like two peas in a pod.
“Who is the father and who is the son?
“We used to distinguish the father by his topknot
from his son, who had a pigtail.”
Now that his son is married and wears a topknot,
nobody can tell the father apart from the son
if you look the father and son walk together.
This is what the people of the village said about how they looked alike.
One day, the woodcutter’s father suddenly passed away.
He was so sad that
he went to his father’s grave every morning, and then cried
and staggered home late every night.
A few days later, his wife said to the woodcutter.
“Honey, please stop crying and go to the market.
We have nothing to eat anymore.”
“Ok, Honey.”
The woodcutter cut down a tree, prepared a bunch of firewood, and went to the market.
As he arrived, some peddlers
noisily gathered a crowd of people around them.
Come, look at my wares.
Buy from me now, as I don’t come every day or every month.
The woodcutter looked at the items with the crowd.
There were so many new things that he had never seen.
He walked through the market with hurried steps, looking at a variety of goods.
When he passed by one of the peddlers,
he saw his late father
staring up at him from a strange plate.
The woodcutter was surprised and bowed deeply in respect.
“Oh, Father! I thought you died, but you’ve been there this whole time?”
"Ho ho, he must be a country bumpkin who doesn’t know about mirrors,"
the peddler said to himself, trying not to chuckle.
“As God has been extremely impressed by your honor to your father,
so God sends your late father back to you.
If anyone else sees this, God might be angry. Please, hide it and see it alone.”
The peddler sold the mirror to the woodcutter at a high price.
When he went back home, he hid the mirror deep inside his attic.
The next day, he stole his way to the attic without his wife noticing.
“Good morning, Father.”
The woodcutter took it out and made a deep bow to his father every morning.
Everyday, he bowed to his father.
“Good night, Father.”
He did this every night also.
Secrets, however, are always found out in the end!
One day, when he went out to the mountain.
"To whom is he talking so friendly?
There must be something going on."
First, the woodcutter’s wife went through the whole room.
"There's nothing… Then, is someone hiding in the attic?"
The woodcutter's wife went into attic, and searched all around.
At last, she found the mirror.
“Oh, my God!”
Seeing the mirror, she was surprised.
A young lady stared at her from the square plate.
"Who are you? Why are you in my house?”
She screamed with anger and punched the mirror.
“Oh, no! Look at this!”
Seeing the mirror, she was surprised.
The young lady in the mirror also struck at her in the same way.
The woodcutter’s wife ran out of the attic, flushed with rage.
She went directly to the woodcutter's mother.
“Oh, my Mother-in-law! Oh! This is terrible!”
“What’s the problem?”
“My husband has been hiding a young lady in the attic.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“I saw her with my own eyes.
If you don’t believe me, go to the attic by yourself, ohhhh.”
So, his mother went to the attic.
Also, seeing the mirror, she was surprised.
A crumpled old woman
stared at her from the mirror.
“Hey, old woman! Who are you?
Why are you intruding my home? Why?”
The mother-in-law punched the mirror, screaming loudly.
“Oh, God. What a fierce old woman! I don’t understand at all."
The crumpled old woman in the mirror also threw a punch in the same way.
The mother-in-law ran out of the attic quickly.
Then, she got even more angry than her daughter-in-law
“Did you say that you saw a young lady?”
“Yes, mother-in-law. Isn’t it true?”
“No, I saw an old lady!
He must have even brought that young lady’s mother.
Oh dear! They say no one can be trusted.
How could he do such a horrible thing?”
At that moment, the woodcutter came back home.
“Honey, who is that woman you're hiding?”
“Who is the old woman in the attic?”
He was startled.
"What should I do if God gets angry with me about this…?
No, no. It might be okay to tell the truth to my mother and my wife."
He replied honestly.
“The person in the attic is my father himself.”
“Stop lying!”
“So now you're going to trick your old mother by not telling the truth."
His wife and mother didn’t believe his words.
The family's quarrel was heard
by the villagers, and they gathered to gossip about it.
"I can’t believe there's such quarreling in such a dutiful son’s family.”
“That makes two of us. Tut, tut.”
Everyone whispered to each other.
No one, however, tried to break up the fight.
Nobody understood the reason for the fight
because they all lived in such a remote mountain village.
Nobody there knew about mirrors.
At that moment, a traveler was passing by the village.
The traveler was full of knowledge in many things after travelling through many places.
He wondered about all the commotion.
“What's going on over here?"
One of the villagers told him the story about the quarrel.
"Hm, I see. So that’s what happened.”
The traveler nodded his head and went into the woodcutter’s house.
The traveler asked the woodcutter,
"Hey, can I meet your father?”
The woodcutter took out the mirror carefully from the attic.
“Hmm. Heh heh heh heh…"
The traveler raised the mirror up with a smile.
“This is called, 'a mirror.' It reflects everything in front of it.”
“Hey, don’t you think you really look like your father?
That’s why whenever you saw your face reflected in the mirror, you thought you saw your late father.”
The woodcutter’s mother then asked, tilting her head,
“Then, who on earth was that young lady and old woman?”
The young lady is your daughter-in-law herself and the old woman is yourself.”
Listening to his explanation, the villagers began to laugh loudly together.
The woodcutter, his wife, and his mother blushed with shame
like red persimmons.