The Golden Goose

Also known as Suvannahamsa Jataka

• 3 minute read
• Ages 6-10
• Jataka Tales

A man died and was reborn as a goose, and his feathers were made of gold.

He remembered his old life clearly. He had left a wife and three daughters behind, and they were poor, and he knew exactly how poor because he had been unable to provide for them while he lived.

So he flew to the house where they were living and landed on the roof beam.

One feather

They came out and stared at him.

"Do not be afraid," he said. "I was your husband and your father. I have come back to look after you."

And he pulled out one feather from his own breast and left it on the sill and flew away.

The feather was solid gold. They sold it, and it was enough to live on comfortably for a long time.

He came back when the money ran low, and left another. And another after that. He came every few months for years, and the family had a good house and good clothes and never wanted for anything, and it cost him one feather at a time.

The mother's idea

Then one day the mother said something to her daughters.

"Animals cannot be trusted. One day he will not come back. And when he stops coming we will be exactly as we were before."

"He has never missed," said the eldest.

"He will. And there is a room full of gold flying about on that bird. Why should we take it a feather at a time when we could have all of it at once?"

The daughters would not agree to it. They said he was their father. They said it was cruel.

So the mother waited until they were out.

The catch

The goose came as usual and settled on the beam, and she called him down and spoke kindly to him, and when he was close enough she caught him with both hands.

He did not struggle. He could not understand what was happening.

She pulled the feathers out, all of them, every one, until he was bare and shivering in her hands.

And every feather she pulled turned to an ordinary white goose feather the moment it left him. There was not one grain of gold in the whole pile.

She had not known that. Nobody had told her the gold was a gift and not a substance.

Afterwards

She had a plain goose and no gold, and she could not undo it, so she put him in the yard in a barrel and fed him until his feathers grew back.

They grew back white.

When he could fly he went, and he did not come to that house again, and the family lived exactly as they had lived before he ever landed on the roof.