Featured on PDR in the collection William Elliot Griffis’ Korean Fairy Tales (1922)

Many of the Korean fairy tales told by William Elliot Griffis begin rather pedagogically. “Korea is the land of beautiful scenery and lovely flowers”, begins “The King of Flowers”. “No bird is more common in Korea than the magpie”, we are told at the outset of “The Sky Bridge of Birds”. Yet Griffis has a talent for transitioning quickly from these educational openings to quite striking narratives shot through with images that are hard to forget. Here, for example, is how “The Sky Bridge of Birds” continues: