The Golden Starfruit Tree

The Golden Starfruit Tree
An illustration of the starfruit tree and the magical bird
Folk tale
Name	The Golden Starfruit Tree
Data
Country	Vietnam
Origin Date	1934
Published in	Truyện cổ nước Nam by Nguyễn Như Ngọc Kho tàng truyện cổ tích Việt Nam by Nguyễn Đổng Chi

The Golden Starfruit Tree (Vietnamese: Ăn khế trả vàng, lit. 'Eating starfruit and paying with gold' or simply Vietnamese: Cây khế, lit. 'The starfruit tree') is a Vietnamese folktale. It tells the story of a poor farmer who is paid handsomely by a magical bird after letting it feeds on his starfruit tree and his rich older brother who perishes from his own greediness.

Story[]

The most known variant of the story can be summarized as follows:^[1][2]

In a certain village, there was a rich man with two sons. After the man died, the sons split his fortune. The greedy older son took most of the fortune, leaving his kind younger brother with just a starfruit tree. The younger son took care of the tree and it soon became laden with fruit.

One day, a magical bird appeared (a phoenix or a raven in different variants) and ate the fruit. When the owner complained, the bird told him "Eating a starfruit, paying back a piece of gold. Making a three-span pouch to carry them". Next day, the bird returned and took the young man to an island full of gold to fill his pouch. Thanks to the gold, the younger son became rich.

Seeing his brother's newfound wealth, the older son demanded to exchange the starfruit tree with his own fortune. The younger son complied, and the older son became a farmer living next to the tree. The magical bird returned and told him the same, but the greedy man instead made a much bigger pouch, collecting much more gold than what the bird could handle. On their returning trip, the bird dropped the man into the sea, where he drowned.

Origin and variants[]

The first variant of the story was collected by scholar in the first volume of his Truyện cổ nước Nam (lit. 'Southern country's ancient tales'). In this variant, the phoenix simply vomits out another starfruit tree, whose flowers are made of silver and fruits made of gold. When the older brother obtains the starfruit tree, no phoenix appears and he is mocked by ravens.^[3] Vietnamese folklorist in his Kho tàng truyện cổ tích Việt Nam (lit. 'Vietnam's collection of folktales') included various Vietnamese and Hmong variants of the story under the title of "A man dies for wealth, a bird dies for food" (人為財死，鳥為食亡), which is a proverb based on a similar Chinese folktale.^[4]

Adaptions[]

The Golden Starfruit Tree is one of Vietnamese fairy tales adapted by (lit. 'Vietnamese fairy tales'), a VHS series directed by based on Nguyễn Đổng Chi's folklore collection.^[5] The episode was released in 1993, featuring Hồng Tơ, Tô Kiều Lan, Hoàng Thơi and Kim Anh.^[6]

See also[]

• Tsarevitch Ivan, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf - a similar Russian folktale about a magical bird feeding on a fruit tree.

References[]