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The Legend of the Crow

Once upon a time, a mother and her son lived together in a small seaside town. The mother looked after both of them by selling desserts, and did so well, delighted to find that her son was clever, and soon able to help her in many ways. As he grew to maturity though, the young man thought it would be best to use his talents more profitably, eventually getting himself taken on as a crew member in a trading ship. His mother was sorrowful to be losing him, but he promised always to come back, bringing the money that would help her.

And so he did in the early years. But it was not long before, able as he was, he could buy his own ship and engage in trade up and down the coast. That meant that his visits became fewer and fewer, until ten years passed without his having come home.

His mother worried about her son, but heard from other seafarers that he was doing well, and had married a beautiful and rich young woman of good family. Then one day she heard he was returning to his birthplace.

Naturally overjoyed, unable to wait for the day her darling boy would return, the woman prepared special food to welcome him, kanom jeen - Thai noodles with the curry that's so hard to make properly. But the mother was an excellent cook. She selected the best ingredients, and on the day her son returned with his bride she was waiting at the pier to welcome them.

In spite of the time that had passed, the mother naturally recognised her son. She greeted him as he came ashore with his wife, but to her dismay heard the young woman ask who this old woman could be, who had the impertinence to confront them. Even more to her distress, she heard her son, the boy she'd brought up so selflessly, rejecting her - telling this rich young woman that he'd never seen her before. And worse. When she nevertheless offered them the kanom jeen she'd prepared with such love, the son, not wanting his wife to know how humble his origins had been, threw the food into the sea, and turned away.

But no son can disavow the debt he owes his mother like this. Angered beyond control, the woman cursed this ungrateful child - cursed him to become the crow that's as black outwardly as her son had become inside: the crow that steals food wherever it can find it, and drinks from the nearest puddle.

So powerful was this virtuous mother's curse, that her son immediately began to dwindle, to blacken, his body covered first with a sort of furry dimness, then with glossy black feathers - his mouth lengthening, his voice becoming the raucous screech appropriate…so that before the astonished eyes of his wife and the crowd on the pier, he'd turned into a crow, flew up into the sky - disappeared.