Speaker 1: Yuki Onna by Lefkadio Herne in a village of Musashi Province.
They lived two woodcutters, Mosaku and Minokichi. At the time
of which I am speaking, Mosaku was an old man
and Minokichi, his apprentice, was a lad of eighteen years.
Every day they went together to a forest situated about
five miles from their village. On the way to that forest,
there is a wide river to cross, and there is
a ferry boat. Several times a bridge was built where
the ferry is, but the bridge was each time carried
away by a flood. No common bridge can resist the
current there when the river rises. Mosaku and Minokichi were
on their way home one very cold evening when a
great snowstorm overtook them. They reached the ferry and they
found that the boatmen had gone away, leaving his boat
on the other side of the river. It was no
day for swimming, and the woodcutters took shelter in the
ferryman's hut, thinking themselves lucky to find any shelter at all.
There was no brazier in the hut, nor any place
in which to make a fire. It was only a
two mate hut with a single door, but no window.
Mosaku and Minokichi fastened the door and lay down to rest,
with their straw raincoats over them. At first they did
not feel very cold, and they thought that the storm
would soon be over. The old man almost immediately fell asleep,
but the boy, Minokichi, lay awake a long time, listening
to the awful wind and the continual slashing of the
snow against the door. The river was roaring, and the
hut swayed and creaked like a junket sea. There was
a terrible storm, and the air was every moment becoming colder,
and Minokichi shivered under his raincoat. But at last, in
spite of the cold, he too fell asleep. He was
awakened by a showering of snow in his face. The
hut of the door had been forced open, and by
the snow light Yuki Akari, he saw a woman in
the room, a woman all in white. She was bending
above Mosaku and blowing her breath upon him, and her
breath was like a bright white smoke. Almost in the
same moment, she turned to Minokichi and stooped over him.
He tried to cry out, but found that he could
not utter any sound. The white woman bent down over him,
lower and lower, until her face almost touched him, and
he saw that she was very beautiful, though her eyes
made him afraid. For a little while she continued to
look at him. Then she smiled, and she whispered, I
intended to treat you like the other man, but I
cannot help feeling some pity for you because you are
so young. You are a pretty boy, Minokichi, and I
will not hurt you now, But if you ever tell anybody,
even your own mother, about what you have seen this night,
I shall know it, and then I will kill you.
Remember what I say With these words. She turned from
him and passed through the doorway. Then he found himself
able to move, and he sprang up and looked out,
But the woman was nowhere to be seen, and the
snow was driving furiously into the hut. Minukichi closed the
door and secured it by fixing several billets of wood
against it. He wondered if the wind had blown it open.
He thought that he might have been only dreaming and
might have mistaken the gleam of the snow light in
the doorway for the figure of a white woman. But
he could not be sure. He called to Mosaku and
was frightened because the old man did not answer. He
put out his hand in the dark and touched Mosaku's
face and found that it was ice. Mosaku was stark
and dead. By dawn, the storm was over, and when
the ferryman returned to his station a little after sunrise,
he found Minukichi lying senseless beside the frozen body of Mosaku.
Minokichi was promptly cared for and soon came to himself,
but he remained a long time ill from the effects
of the cold of that terrible night. He had been
greatly frightened also by the old man's death, but he
said nothing about the vision of the woman in white.
As soon as he got well again, he returned to
his calling, going alone every morning to the forest and
coming back at nightfall with his bundles of wood, which
his mother helped him to sell. One evening in the
winter of the following year, as he was on his
way home, he overtook a girl who happened to be
traveling by the same road. She was a tall, slim girl,
very good looking, and she answered Minokichi's greeting in a
voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of
a song bird. Then he walked beside her and they
began to talk. The girl said that her name was
O Yuki, that she had lately lost both of her parents,
and that she was going to Yedo, where she happened
to have some poor relations who might help her to
find a situation as a servant. Minukichi soon felt charmed
by this strange girl, and the more that he looked
at her, the handsomer she appeared to be. He asked
her whether she was yet betrothed, and she answered laughingly
that she was free. Then, in her turn, she asked
Minukichi whether he was married or pledged to marry, and
he told her that although he had only a widowed
mother to support, the question of an honorable daughter in
law had not yet been considered as he was very young.
After these confidences, they walked on for a long time
without speaking. But as the proverb declares, kiga areba memo
kuchi hodo niemo noo wo eyo, when the wish is there,
the eyes can say as much as the mouth. By
the time when they reached the village, they had become
very much pleased with each other, and then Minukichi asked
o Yuki to rest awhile at his house. After some
shy hesitation, she went there with him, and his mother
made her welcome and prepared a warm meal for her.
O Yuki behaved so nicely that Minukichi's mother took a
sudden fancy to her and persuaded her to delay her
journey to Yedo. And the natural end of the matter
was that Yuki never went to Yedo at all. She
remained in the house as an honorable daughter in law.
O Yuki proved a very good daughter in law. When
Minukichi's mother came to die some five years later, her
last words were words of affection and praise for the
wife of her son, and o Yuki bore Minukichi ten children,
boys and girls, handsome children all of them, and very
fair of skin. The country folk thought o Yuki a
wonderful person by nature, different from themselves. Most of the
peasant women ate early, but o Yuki, even after having
become the mother of ten children, looked as young and
fresh as on the day when she had first come
to the village. One night, after the children had gone
to sleep, o Yuki was sewing by the light of
a paper lamp, and Minokichi, watching her, said, to see
you sewing there with the light on your face makes
me think of a strange thing that happened when I
was a lad of eighteen. I then saw somebody as
beautiful and white as you are now. Indeed, she was
very like you. Without lifting her eyes from her work,
o Yuki responded, tell me about her. Where did you
see her? Then? Minokichi told her about the terrible night
in the ferryman's hut, and about the white woman that
had stooped above him, smiling and whispering, and about the
silent death of old Mosaku. And he said, asleep or awake,
that was the only time that I saw a bee
as beautiful as you. Of course, she was not a
human being, and I was afraid of her, very much afraid.
But she was so white. Indeed, I have never been
sure whether it was a dream that I saw or
the woman of the snow. O Yuki flung down her
sewing and arose and bowed above Minokiche where he sat,
and shrieked into his face. It was I, I I Yuki,
it was. And I told you then that I would
kill you if you ever said one word about it.
But for those children asleep there, I would kill you
this moment. And now you had better take very very
good care of them, for if ever they have reason
to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve.
Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a
crying of wind. Then she melted into a bright white
mist that spired to the roof beams and shuddered away
through the smoke hole. Never again was she seen, And
of Yuki honor