Once there lived a kind and gentle maiden in a remote Korean village. She was very poor and barely managed to eke out a living for herself and her old mother, whom she had to care for all alone.
One day the girl was in the kitchen, scooping up freshly-cooked rice and putting it in a large bowl to carry to the dinner table. Suddenly a toad appeared in the kitchen as if from nowhere. It crawled over the floor, shivering, and dragged its body to where the girl was standing. Then it jumped heavily onto the kitchen hearth. On the hearth were a few grains of rice the girl had spilled while emptying the pot. The toad hungrily ate up the rice.
"My, you must really be hungry. And you look cold, too," the girl said.
"Here, have some more rice. And why don't you stay right here on the warm hearth?"
She spilled about half a ladleful of rice out on the hearth. The toad looked up at the girl in gratitude and gobbled up that rice too, all the while wriggling his puffy throat.
Well, you can imagine that from that day on, the toad made his home there on the warm kitchen hearth and would eat rice out of the girl's hands. This way of life continued day after day, until a whole year had passed. By this time the toad had grown into a huge creature.
Now, this village had been troubled for a long, long time by a huge snake that lived in a nest on the outskirts of the hamlet. This snake played havoc with the rice paddies and the vegetable fields. It stole cows and horses. It even kidnapped women and children and dragged them away to its nest, where it ate them up at its leisure. This had happened not once or twice, but many, many times.
The villagers knew the hide-out of the snake. Its nest was in a huge cave in a rocky hill just outside the village. Master bowmen and famed marksmen had come in turn to the great snake's nest to try and onster, but none succeeded. Year after year the snake continued to torment the villagers. They never knew when the snake would come forth from its nest and pounce. They never knew where it would strike next. The villagers lived in constant fear.
The maiden came to the point where she could not bear to see the sufferings of the village people. "There must be some way the villagers can be saved," she thought.
But when bows and arrows and guns had failed to kill the snake, what could one lone and weak girl do? After much pondering, the girl finally decided that she would give up her own life to save the villagers from this curse.
"If a large number of people can be saved, it doesn't matter what happens to me," she thought. "I shall offer myself to be eaten by the great snake, and I shall entreat the snake never again to terrorize our village. Where guns and arrows have failed, perhaps my pleas will succeed."
By that time, her old mother had died, and she was all alone in the world except for her friend the toad. So, once she had made up her mind, she put on her little shoes with their turned-up toes and slipped out of the house. Just before leaving she called to the toad. Wiping tears from her eyes, she said "We have lived happily together for a long time, haven't we? But today is our last day. I must say good-bye. There will be no one to give you your rice tomorrow. When you get hungry, you will have to go out and find your own food."
The toad, of course, had no way of understanding the language of human beings. But the girl spoke to it in simple and gentle words, just as if she were talking to a child. All the while the toad squatted on the hearth gazing steadily up at the girl's face.
The girl finally wound her way to the snake's nest in the rocky hill outside the village. Forgetting her fear and sorrow, she stepped right up to the mouth of the snake's nest.
"I have come in place of the villagers to offer you my life," she said.
"Go ahead, eat me. But after this, please never again bother the village people."
Nothing happened, so the girl continued speaking thus for a long time. Soon night drew near, and darkness began to fall over the countryside. Finally, when the last light of day faded, the earth began to tremble, and the snake came out of its hole. Its scales were a gleaming green, its red tongue like a flame. When the girl saw the terrible appearance of the snake, she fainted on the spot and fell to the ground.
Just then a single streak of white poison flashed toward the snake. It came from the toad which the girl had cared for with such kindness. And though the toad was small compared to the snake, it was squirting poison with all its might to protect the unconscious girl.
But the snake was not to be beaten easily. It began spewing poison right back at the toad. Thus the snake and the toad matched poison against poison, the jets of poison crossing and criss-crossing in the air like two sharp darts. Neither would give in. This continued for one hour, two hours. There was no sound of clashing swords, no shouts of battle. Yet it was a deadly fight just the same, waged in grim silence.
Gradually, the snake's poison began to weaken. On the other hand, the toad's poison became stronger and stronger. Still, the battle waged on. Suddenly, the snake let out a great gasp and fell down on the rocky hillside. Its great body twitched once, twice, and then it was dead. At the same time the toad, worn out with its struggle, collapsed. The battle was finally at an end.
A lone villager chanced by the scene of the fighting the next morning and found the girl still unconscious. He recognized her, took her to her home and nursed her back to health. In the meantime, a light rain roused the toad and he hopped back to the girl's home, too. He waited outside her door while the villager was tending to her inside, entering only after he'd left. The girl warmly greeted the toad from her bed, and the toad resumed its warm spot upon her kitchen hearth. The villager checked in on the girl from time to time to see how she was doing, and as one thing leads to another, he and the girl fell in love with one another and were married.
Never did the girl learn of the toad's brave deed in her behalf. Nor did the girl, or the townspeople for that matter, ever learn how the snake had been so mysteriously felled. None knew but the toad, and he was content to remain in his cherished spot, in the warm corner of the girl's kitchen, in all the years to come.
