Episode Details

An old performing monkey, grown too stiff to dance as he once did, overhears his master send for the butcher — after a lifetime of faithful service, he is to be sold and cut up. In the night he slips away to the forest and lays his trouble before the wise old wild boar, whose counsel is as daring as it is kind: at dawn the boar will snatch the master's baby from the porch, and the monkey himself must be the rescuer who brings the child safely home. A tale of gratitude waking in a hard heart — and of the clever, faithful friend who saved his own life by saving a child.

From Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki (1908), public domain; told in a fresh in-house rendering.

KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.