Free Tales of a Korean Grandmother by Frances Carpenter Page B

rice to keep the spirits of hunger away from their gates.
    "And the farmers will dig up their bamboo and their beans to find out in just which months the good rains will come," the old Korean grandmother continued. She described how each farmer had split a section of young bamboo and laid twelve little beans side by side within it. He then had tied the halves of the bamboo together again and covered it lightly with earth, where it could be moistened by rain and by dew.
    "Each of those beans stands for one of the twelve months," Halmoni said. "When the farmer digs it up tonight and opens the bamboo case, he will examine each little bean. The ones that are dampest will be the months in which the most rain will come."
    In the city, too, there were special doings on the night of the Great Fifteenth Day. The men and boys "walked the bridges," crossing once for every year of their age. They carried with them picnic baskets filled with good things so that they might eat and drink with friends whom they met upon the bridges.
    Of all the events of the day for Yong Tu, most exciting was the great stone fight outside the city on the bare wintry fields.
    "You should have seen that fight this afternoon, Halmoni," the boy said to his grandmother when they were eating their evening rice. "Ai, it was like a battle, and many people were hurt. The teams lined up facing each other. The men had pads on their shoulders and special hats to protect their heads. You should have heard them shout when those stones began to fly. You should have seen how clever they were at dodging them, too. One stone—but only a little one, Halmoni—flew so close to my father's head that it knocked his hat off. He, I was almost afraid. But the hat was not hurt," the boy hastened to add. "And my father did not mind. He was shouting as loudly as the rest of the crowd."
    "Too many heads are broken in the stone fights," the old woman declared. "It is not as if it were a true battle. It has no such good purpose as had the very first stone fight."
    "Tell me about the very first stone fight, Halmoni," the boy begged. "Was it long ago?"
    "Very, very long ago, Dragon Head," the old grandmother said, nodding her head. "How long ago nobody seems to know. Perhaps it was when the tall horsemen galloped over our land from that northern place called Mongolia. Perhaps it was their chieftain, Genghis Khan himself, who led those fierce horsemen to conquer us. Or, it may have been later when the Chinese came across our neighbor-land, Manchuria, in quest of our treasures.
    "But whenever it was, it was in the midst of a war. The battle which was the key to the victory was being fought. A brave Korean general had lined his men up above a narrow pass in the mountains. His soldiers were as courageous and strong as any tiger, but their gunpowder gave out. A tiger could not fight without teeth or claws. How could our soldiers fight without any gunpowder?
    "That is the question the general asked himself when he lay down to sleep on this night. His heart was indeed heavy, and his rest was disturbed. But in his dreams, a good Spirit came to him and said, 'Be not dismayed! Under a tree, not far away, you will find a heap of stones. Throw these down on your enemy, and you will drive him away.'
    "With his dream fresh in his mind the general called his men to the tree and showed them the pile of stones. Like rain, the brave soldiers sent the sharp rocks flying down on the heads of their advancing foe. More and more stones were hurled until all the foe had been killed.
    "When the strange battle was reported to the Emperor, he took delight in seeing it enacted before him again in his palace courtyard. Each year thereafter, when the rice fields were bare and there was time for such sport, stone fights were held for his amusement.
    "To meet future attacks from enemies from the north, that Emperor had many other piles of stones laid up beside the roads. The story of the good Spirit in the general's