Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/502

 every cent he has, and then fares on, a beggar. Of how he tramps up and down the country, and finally comes to the capital and becomes a general, of how the enemy have in their ranks a veritable Goliath, of how our hero goes and challenges him only to find that it is the very person whom he had befriended, and how a happy peace is consummated, all this forms the kind of story that the boys and girls of Korea can listen to by the hour and still wish for more.

The peculiar customs of the country are enshrined in the folklore. The unique stone-fight; the tug-of-war; the detestable widow-stealing and the still more horrible custom called posam, which is veritable murder, committed for the purpose of forestalling the predictions of the fortune-teller that the bride will soon become a widow; the wiles of the ajuns, or hangers-on at country prefectures, who are looked upon much as Judean publicans were, all these themes and many more, based upon national customs and traits, swell the volume of Korean folk-lore.

It is natural that a land as old as this should be filled with relics of other days, and that they should be surrounded with a halo of popular veneration. Even though many of these relics are now lost, like the Holy Grail, yet the stories remain. There was the golden yardstick of Silla, and the pair of jade flutes that refused to sound if taken away from the town of Kyong-ju. There was the magic stone in which one could look and discover the nature of any disease. There was the magic robe which would render its wearer invisible, and the King's stone, from which the ashes of cremated sovereigns of Silla were cast into the Japan Sea. Stories cluster about the dolmens and cromlechs that are found all over Korea, but whose origin no one seems to know.

Among the miscellaneous tales are those which tell of the introductions of various things into Korea, or their invention. St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, but Prince Yunsan introduced them into Korea. He wanted a few to keep under his bed, but as there were none in Korea he sent to India and secured