The Tongue-Cut Sparrow

Long, long ago, in a little house in Japan, there lived an old man and his wife. The old man was kind and patient, but the old woman was cross and quarrelsome from morning till night. Since they had no children, the old man kept a little tame sparrow for company. He called her Suzume San, Miss Sparrow, and loved her as if she were his own child. Every evening, when he came home from his work in the fields, he opened the cage and let her fly freely about the room. He taught her to bow her little head, and she learned quickly.

One morning the old man went out to chop wood in the forest, and the old woman stayed home to wash clothes. The day before she had made a big bowl of rice starch to stiffen the laundry. But when she came to fetch it, the bowl was quite empty. 'Who has stolen my starch?' she roared. Just then the little sparrow flew down from her perch, bowed her feathered head as politely as she had been taught, and chirped, 'It was I who ate it. I thought it was food for me. Please forgive me, tweet, tweet, tweet!'

But the old woman would not forgive. She had never liked the sparrow, and now at last she had a reason to rage. 'You took my starch with that tongue!' she shrieked. 'Then you shall feel what it is like to live without it!' She seized the scissors from the table, caught the little bird in her hard hands, and cut off her tongue. Then she chased the sparrow out through the door, without a thought for where the poor creature might go. Suzume San flew trembling away across the rice paddies, silent and bleeding, while the old woman returned to her starch, grumbling on.

In the evening the old man came home from the forest. As always he expected Suzume San to fly to meet him, chirping and bright, and settle on his shoulder. But the house was silent. 'Where is my little sparrow?' he asked anxiously. At first the old woman pretended not to know. But the old man would not give up, and at last she told him all, how the sparrow had eaten the starch, how she herself had cut off her tongue and driven her away. She even showed him the little tongue. 'How could you be so cruel?' the old man whispered, and a great sorrow filled his heart.