The Golden Flute

The Golden Flute

Once upon a time a woman and her daughter lived in the mountains. The daughter liked to dress in red. For this reason, she was called Little Red. One day Little Red and her mother were working in the fields. All of a sudden a gale blew up, and in the sky there appeared an evil dragon. It stretched down its claws, caught Little Red in a tight grip, and flew off with her toward the west.

Little Red's mother vaguely heard her daughter's words carried on the wind: " Oh mother, oh mother, as dear as can be! My brother, my brother will rescue me! " Wiping away her tears, Little Red's mother gazed into the sky and said, “ But I only have a daughter. Who can this brother be?"

Little Red's mother staggered toward home, and when she had gotten halfway there, her hair caught in the branches of a bayberry tree growing by the roadside. While she was untangling her hair, she spotted a red, red berry dangling from a twig. She picked it and swallowed it without thinking. When she arrived home, the woman gave birth to a boy with a round head and red cheeks. She named the boy Little Bayberry.

Bayberry grew up very quickly, and in a few days he was a young boy of fourteen or fifteen. His mother wanted to ask Bayberry to rescue his sister, but she couldn't bring herself to give him such a dangerous job. All she could do was weep to herself in secret.

One day a crow landed on the roof of the woman's house and cried: " Your sister is suffering out there, out there! She's weeping in the evil dragon's lair! Bloodstains on her back, She's digging rocks with hands so bare! "