This folk tale is a Korean traditional old story that was re-written by Kyoungbok Lee and Ilsoo Yoon.
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A long time ago, there was a lazy boy who really hated to work. He just wanted to sleep all day long without working. That’s why the people in his village called him “Lazy” instead of using his real name.
One day, his mother was really sick. She couldn’t even stand up, so she asked her son ‘Lazy’ to bring her a glass of water. “Lazy, Can you bring a glass of water?” Of course, the son who really didn’t like to move refused to get the glass of water for her. ‘Lazy’ started to get annoyed at his mother who was always trying to make him move. Eventually, he thought “Being a sleepy cow will be much better than being a hard-working human”, so he decided to run away from home.
The lazy boy started to walk without any destination. When he was walking alone crossed a path, met an old man who had a cow shaped mask in his hand. ‘Lazy’ started to tell his story. After the boy finished his story, the old man said, “Don’t you really want to work? If so, put on this mask. When you put this on, you can be a cow.” The boy was fearful, but he put it on his face because the old man said that he could become a cow if he put it on. Right after the boy put on the mask; he became a real cow and discovered that he could only make ‘moo’ sound. The old man took the boy, now is a cow, to a market, and sold him to a farmer with saying, “Do not give him turnips, If you give him turnips, he will be died.”
After the boy was sold, he had to work really hard because the farmer whipped him if he didn’t. Lazy thought “I’m not a cow, I’m a human. If he can go back home, I will work really hard, but if I can’t, it will be better to die than to live like this.”
Suddenly, the boy remembered the talk between the old man and the farmer. He started to look for turnips so he could eat them and to die, but he couldn’t find any. A few days later, he found a cart filled with turnips. Seeing the turnips, ‘Lazy’ ran toward the cart and ate them. “Mother, I’m so sorry, I was wrong.”
The moment he swallowed the turnips, he felt something hit him. It was a dream! When he woke up, he realized the he had had a dream when he took a nap. ‘Lazy’ started to cry because felt so relieved. The boy promised himself to work hard from then on.
From that day on, ‘Lazy’ became a completely different person. He started to work harder than anyone else in the village, and people called him “Hard Worker” instead of his first nickname, “Lazy.” Finally, when he went out to work, he said, “I’m going to work hard.”