Every night the man crossed over a hill by the sea and came near the girl’s house. And she, her mind on the time appointed, would slip stealthily out. But out of regard for her mother’s feelings, she was likely to be late. Sometimes she would finally come as the moon was beginning to decline. Sometimes she had not yet come even when it was time for the first cock to lift his voice far and near.
It was one night after things had gone on thus for some time. The man, squatting under a high rock like a folding screen, sang a song to beguile his loneliness as he waited. He gathered up his impatience in his salty throat and sang with all his might against the surging waves.
The mother, hearing the song, asked her daughter lying beside her what it was. The girl shammed sleep at first, but after she had been asked a second and third time, she could not but answer. “It doesn’t seem to be a man’s voice, does it?” she said deceitfully, frightened out of her wits.
Then the mother came back with the question what could sing save a man. And through sheer quickness of wit, the girl replied that it might be a badger. Through the ages, time and again, has love taught such wit to women.
When morning came, the mother spoke of having heard the song to an old woman of the neighborhood who wove straw mats. And the old woman was one of those who had heard the song. She expressed her doubt that a badger could sing but handed the story on to a man who gathered reeds.
When, after passing from mouth to mouth, the story came to the ears of a mendicant priest who had come to the village, he explained with reason how a badger could sing a song. In Buddhist teaching there is a thing called metempsychosis. So the soul of the badger might originally have been the soul of a man. In which case, what the man could do, the badger could do. Such a thing as singing a song on a moonlight night was not greatly to be wondered at.