This is what happened in ancient times.
The province of Shinano was ruled by a prince who was distinguished by enviable health, was in the prime of his life and could not stand old men and women.
And they are slobs, and they are of no use to the principality, he used to say. He sent every one of those over seventy to a remote island. It was very difficult to feed themselves there; the old people could not get food for themselves at all and quickly died. The hearts of the inhabitants of Sinano were filled with grief and hatred for the prince, but they could not do anything.
There is a place in Shinano called Sarasina. A peasant lived there with his old mother. He couldn’t get the thought out of his head that his mother was already seventy years old and that the prince’s officials were about to appear and take her away. Will she survive the distant exile? What kind of work in the field is there - everything fell out of his hands! He was completely exhausted and decided that it was better to take his mother out of the house himself than to wait for the cruel officials to send her to God knows where.
The evening arrived on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. The full moon flooded the fields and forests with clear light. The peasant, trying not to give away his plan, turned to his mother:
“Isn’t it true, mother, the moon is unusually beautiful today?” Let's go to the mountains and admire the moonlight.
He put his mother on his back and set off. First, he crossed a clearing, walking along an abandoned path, and then entered the forest. Then the old woman began to break off branches from the trees growing on both sides of the path and throw them to the ground. The peasant was surprised:
- Mother, why are you doing this? The old woman grinned, but did not answer. The peasant continued to go deeper into the mountains. He passed through the forest, crossed the valley and climbed to the top of the mountain. Dead silence reigned there; not even birds flew over this mountain. The bright moonlight made it as bright as day, so you could see a cricket barely audibly chirping in the thick grass.
The peasant sat his mother down on the grass, looked at her, and tears flowed from his eyes.
- What's wrong with you? - asked the old woman.
The son sank to the ground in front of her and confessed:
- Listen to me, mother! I was being cunning when I invited you to admire the moon. I brought you to such a wilderness because you are already seventy-one years old and I am afraid that you will be sent into exile on a distant island. So I came up with the idea to make sure that you do not fall into the hands of ruthless officials. Please be lenient with me!
The old woman was not at all surprised by his words.
“I understood everything a long time ago and came to terms with my fate.” You go home and work hard. “Leave quickly, otherwise you will get lost on the way,” she answered.
The peasant was saddened when he heard such words. For a long time he could not part with his mother, but she persuaded him, and he trudged back. Branches scattered on the ground showed him the way, and he never lost his way.
“How prudent mother was, throwing branches so that I wouldn’t get lost on the way back!” - he thought with deep gratitude.
Returning home, he sat down at the entrance and fixed his gaze on the moon shining over the tops of the mountains. Unbearable sadness overwhelmed him, tears flowed in a stream. “Somehow now mother is there on the mountain?”
This thought saddened him even more, and without hesitation, he got up and walked along the familiar road, not even noticing that it was already past midnight. When he, barely catching his breath, climbed up the mountain where he had left his mother, she was sitting with her eyes closed, in the same place and in the same position as when they parted.
“I did very badly by leaving my mother, but now I will never leave you here.” We will return, and I will take care of you as I should,” said the peasant, and they returned home together.
However, they could not live as before: the old woman could sooner or later catch the eye of the officials.
After some thought, the peasant dug a hole under the floor and settled his mother in it.
One day an ambassador arrived to the prince with a letter from the ruler of a neighboring province. The letter said: “Make me a rope from the ashes, but if you don’t, I will go to war and destroy you.”
The army of the ruler of that province was strong, and there was no hope for victory. The prince, finding himself in a difficult situation, called his entourage for a council, but no one knew how to make such a rope.
Then it was announced throughout the principality: “Whoever shows a way to make a rope from ashes will receive a great reward from the prince.”
The only talk among the people was about the invasion and devastation that their native land would suffer if they failed to make a rope from the ashes.
“It’s unlikely that anyone will succeed,” people said. It never occurred to anyone how to get down to business. And then our peasant thought: “Maybe my mother knows how to do this?”
He went down to the underground and told his mother what people were worried about. The old woman laughed:
- Yes, it’s easy! You need to thoroughly soak the rope with salt and then burn it, that’s all!
“What can I say, the old man has a lot of brains,” the peasant thought proudly. He immediately went to the palace and told him what to do to make a rope from the ashes. The prince was delighted and gave the peasant a lot of money as a reward. The rope, which seemed impossible to make, was handed to the ambassador, and he hurried to his master.
A little time passed, and an ambassador again arrived from the neighboring province. This time he brought a precious stone and a letter that read: “Thread a silk thread through this stone, and if you fail, I will go to war and destroy you.”
The prince began to examine the stone from all sides. There was a hole in the stone, so narrow and tortuous that there was no way to pass a thread through it.
The prince called his close associates to a council, and they recognized the task as insoluble.
A great reward was offered to anyone who could figure out how to thread a silk thread through a hole in a stone. But no matter how people racked their brains, they couldn’t come up with anything.
And the peasant again went to his mother for advice.
- What's so difficult about that? You need to smear honey on a stone at one end of the hole, tie an ant to a silk and release it from the other end. The ant will crawl along all the convolutions following the smell of honey and pull a thread through the hole,” she answered, smiling.
The peasant hurried to the palace, appeared before the prince and told him everything he had heard from his mother.
The prince was very pleased and rewarded him well. And the ambassador, having received back the precious stone with a silk thread threaded through it, went home.
The ruler of a neighboring province bowed his head when his ambassador returned. “Yes, there are smart people in Shinano! It’s not so easy to take over this land!” - he thought.
And in Shinano everyone calmed down and decided that the enemy had calmed down and would not bother them anymore.
But soon the ambassador appeared for the third time with a letter. This time he was leading two mares. “Determine by eye which of the mares is the mother and which is the daughter, and if you can’t, I will go to war and destroy you,” the prince read in the letter.
He looked at the horses, and they were like two peas in a pod: they were both the same height, the same color, they even galloped and frolicked the same way. The prince became thoughtful and called his close associates for a council, but this time they didn’t come up with anything. Willy-nilly he had to announce that anyone who manages to solve the new problem will receive any reward he wants.
The people got excited. Those wishing to earn the reward came in droves to the palace and looked at the horses brought from the neighboring province. But even the well-known healers and farriers shook their heads in bewilderment.
And the peasant turned to his mother again. After listening to her son, she, as before, said with a smile:
- Well, this is not a great difficulty! My late husband once told me about such a thing. You need to put an armful of grass in front of the horses. One will immediately attack the food: this is a young horse. The other one will wait until the first one is full, and only then eat the rest - this will be the mother.
The delighted peasant ran to the palace and asked:
- Please instruct me to distinguish the filly from her mother!
He threw fresh grass on the horses, and everything happened as the old woman said: one horse immediately began to eat the grass greedily, while the other remained standing quietly, watching it feed.
Then everything became clear to the prince.
- Here, of course, there can be no mistake! With these words, he hung signs with inscriptions on the horses and handed the mares to the ambassador. “You’re absolutely right,” said the ambassador and sadly set off on his way back. - You turned out to be wiser than everyone else. I give you everything you want! - the prince said to the peasant, amazed at his quick-wittedness.
The peasant realized that now was the time to ask the prince to spare the old mother.
“I don’t need money or things,” said the peasant.
The prince's face changed, but the peasant hastily continued:
“I ask you to save my mother’s life.” And he told the prince everything without concealment. He listened, eyes wide in surprise. When he learned that all the problems had been resolved thanks to the insight of the old woman, he was amazed.
“It’s true what they say is that old people don’t care!” - he exclaimed. “The smart old woman saved us all from trouble.” I forgive the peasant who hid his elderly mother, and in the future I will not exile old people to the island.
The peasant was generously rewarded, and the rejoicing of the people knew no bounds.
And since the last task, which the ruler of the neighboring province most counted on, was successfully solved, he had to abandon the idea of taking possession of the province of Shinano.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru