THE GOBLIN TREE
A Samurai dwelt in the Oni province and his name was Satsuma Shichizaemon. He had a garden, the most beautiful of any in the village. It was filled with flowering plants, and the shrubs had a delicious fragrance which filled the air. Golden-hearted lilies floated upon the tiny lake, dwarf pines waved their branches over the water’s edge, and above all, dark and silent, towered a huge enoki, or goblin tree.
This tree had stood there for centuries, and no one had dared to cut a branch or even to pull one of its leaves.
Shichizaemon, however, was of a bad heart, and had no reverence for the things of his fathers. He wished the view from his window not to be hidden, and the enoki stood between him and the valley. So he gave orders to have the tree cut down.
That night his mother dreamed a dream. She saw before her a terrible dragon-like monster whose forked tongue spit fire, and who said to her, “Mother of Satsuma Shichizaemon, beware! Your son shall die and all his house if he harm the enoki, for the spirits of the trees will not suffer insult to the goblin tree.”