Hukumusume fairy tale collection > Foreign language (English) > Japanese classical stories

カメ と イノシシ
The tortoise and the boar

(Japanese classical stories)

Translation　ちいさな翻訳屋さん

Japanese　←→　Japanese ＆ English　←→　English

　A long time ago, the tortoise once had very long legs and was very tall animal.

　One day, animals got together and they started a competition to see who was the strongest.

　In those days, the boar was the strongest of all.

　He puffed himself up with his strength all the time, and when he came to the competition,

“Ahem! Ahem!”

　He acted as if he was a big animal.

　It made the tortoise so frustrated. So he coughed

“Ahem! Ahem!”

to pretend like the boar.

　As soon as the boar heard the sound of his coughing,

“Ahem!! Ahem!!”

　He coughed louder in return.

　Then the tortoise coughed much louder,

“Ahem!! Ahem!!”

　And then the boar emulously tried to outdo the tortoise,

“Ahem!!! Ahem!!!”

　They glared at one another for a while, and then the tortoise said,

“By the way, my friend boar.”

“Now what?”

　The boar twisted his long neck to look at the tortoise.

　At that time, the boar had a very long neck, different from now.

“I heard you boast yourself to be a little bit stronger than others.

　Well, you are no match for me, though.”

　When the tortoise said so to the boar, the angry boar said to him,

“What did you say? I will stamp on you!”

and the boar held on to the tortoise’s shell.

　The tortoise struggled to stay on his feet, but since the boar was so strong that

　the tortoise could not stay any longer and his legs gradually became shortened.

　At the same time, his hard shell started to crack and soon the whole surface became all cracked.

　This is the reason why the tortoise has such short legs as if he is withstanding something,

and has a cracked shell even though it is really hard.

“Ha-ha! Serves you right!”

　Boar, the winner, was so much happy as to run vigorously.

　However, since he was looking away, he severely hit his head against the massive stone in front of him

and his long neck was shortened.

　This is the reason why the boar has short neck as it is today.

The end

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