Reading Notes: Twenty-Two Goblins, Part A

The Three Lovers who brought the Dead Girl to Life.  Whose wife should she be?

This story comes from Twenty-Two Goblins, translated by Arthur W. Ryder, with illustrations by Perham W. Nahl.

In this story, there are essentially seven characters: two as the storyteller and audience as well as the five characters in the goblin’s story.

There is the father of Coral, who is extremely beautiful.  Her three suitors feast on her prettiness “like the birds who live on moonbeams.”

The three suitors are devastated when Cora just up and dies in some random twist of fate.  They all take three different routes in life: one stays with her ashes, one goes to dip her bones in the Ganges, and the other becomes a monk and wonders the countries.

The monk stumbles upon the house of a man who lives with his family.  After witnessing the man’s magic spell that he used to bring his troublesome child back to life, the monk decides to take the book and use it to bring Coral back to life.

He and the other two use all the things they had kept: the suitor with the ashes and the one who dipped her bones in the holy Ganges.  Coral is brought back to life and the goblin poses his question to the king: which one should she marry.

After discerning whose actions were more like father, brother, and husband the king chooses the man who slept with her ashes as her husband.  He is correct and he once again catches the goblin.

From Twenty-Two Goblins  illustrated by Perham W. Nahl