Lafcadio Hearn's snow woman (1904) — a promise made in a storm, and the night it is broken.
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Read each sentence aloud and say what the bold word means from the rest of the sentence. Then reveal.
Which word fits the definition? The first letter is given. Say the word, then reveal.
These words live inside fixed phrases. Say the missing word, then reveal.
Hearn's own text, lightly shortened. Read each part; after it, try the quick check from memory, then talk about the question.
In a village of Musashi Province, there lived two woodcutters: Mosaku and Minokichi. At the time of which I am speaking, Mosaku was an old man; and Minokichi, his apprentice, was a lad of eighteen years. Every day they went together to a forest situated about five miles from their village. On the way to that forest there is a wide river to cross; and there is a ferry-boat.
Mosaku and Minokichi were on their way home, one very cold evening, when a great snowstorm overtook them. They reached the ferry; and they found that the boatman had gone away, leaving his boat on the other side of the river. It was no day for swimming; and the woodcutters took shelter in the ferryman’s hut,—thinking themselves lucky to find any shelter at all. There was no brazier in the hut, nor any place in which to make a fire: it was only a two-mat hut, with a single door, but no window. Mosaku and Minokichi fastened the door, and lay down to rest, with their straw rain-coats over them. At first they did not feel very cold; and they thought that the storm would soon be over.
The old man almost immediately fell asleep; but the boy, Minokichi, lay awake a long time, listening to the awful wind, and the continual slashing of the snow against the door. The river was roaring; and the hut swayed and creaked like a junk at sea. It was a terrible storm; and the air was every moment becoming colder; and Minokichi shivered under his rain-coat. But at last, in spite of the cold, he too fell asleep.
He was awakened by a showering of snow in his face. The door of the hut had been forced open; and, by the snow-light (<em>yuki-akari</em>), he saw a woman in the room,—a woman all in white. She was bending above Mosaku, and blowing her breath upon him;—and her breath was like a bright white smoke. Almost in the same moment she turned to Minokichi, and stooped over him. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any sound. The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful,—though her eyes made him afraid. For a little time she continued to look at him;—then she smiled, and she whispered:—“I intended to treat you like the other man. But I cannot help feeling some pity for you,—because you are so young... You are a pretty boy, Minokichi; and I will not hurt you now. But, if you ever tell anybody—even your own mother—about what you have seen this night, I shall know it; and then I will kill you... Remember what I say!”
With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway. Then he found himself able to move; and he sprang up, and looked out. But the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the snow was driving furiously into the hut. Minokichi closed the door, and secured it by fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had blown it open;—he thought that he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken the gleam of the snow-light in the doorway for the figure of a white woman: but he could not be sure. He called to Mosaku, and was frightened because the old man did not answer. He put out his hand in the dark, and touched Mosaku’s face, and found that it was ice! Mosaku was stark and dead...
1. Why do the two woodcutters end up in the ferryman's hut, and what is wrong with it as a shelter?
2. What exactly does the woman in white do to Mosaku, and what condition does she set for Minokichi?
1. A snowstorm overtakes them on the way home, the boatman has left the boat on the far bank, and the hut has no fire, no brazier and no window — only a door they fasten shut.
2. She bends over the old man and blows her bright white breath on him — he is found frozen dead. She spares Minokichi because he is young, on condition that he never tells anyone, even his mother, what he saw; if he does, she will kill him.
By dawn the storm was over; and when the ferryman returned to his station, a little after sunrise, he found Minokichi lying senseless beside the frozen body of Mosaku. Minokichi was promptly cared for, and soon came to himself; but he remained a long time ill from the effects of the cold of that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also by the old man’s death; but he said nothing about the vision of the woman in white. As soon as he got well again, he returned to his calling,—going alone every morning to the forest, and coming back at nightfall with his bundles of wood, which his mother helped him to sell.
One evening, in the winter of the following year, as he was on his way home, he overtook a girl who happened to be traveling by the same road. She was a tall, slim girl, very good-looking; and she answered Minokichi’s greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of a song-bird. Then he walked beside her; and they began to talk. The girl said that her name was O-Yuki; that she had lately lost both of her parents; and that she was going to Yedo, where she happened to have some poor relations, who might help her to find a situation as a servant. Minokichi soon felt charmed by this strange girl; and the more that he looked at her, the handsomer she appeared to be. He asked her whether she was yet betrothed; and she answered, laughingly, that she was free. Then, in her turn, she asked Minokichi whether he was married, or pledged to marry; and he told her that, although he had only a widowed mother to support, the question of an “honorable daughter-in-law” had not yet been considered, as he was very young... After these confidences, they walked on for a long while without speaking; but, as the proverb declares, Ki ga aréba, mé mo kuchi hodo ni mono wo iu: “When the wish is there, the eyes can say as much as the mouth.” By the time they reached the village, they had become very much pleased with each other; and then Minokichi asked O-Yuki to rest awhile at his house. After some shy hesitation, she went there with him; and his mother made her welcome, and prepared a warm meal for her. O-Yuki behaved so nicely that Minokichi’s mother took a sudden fancy to her, and persuaded her to delay her journey to Yedo. And the natural end of the matter was that Yuki never went to Yedo at all. She remained in the house, as an “honorable daughter-in-law.”
O-Yuki proved a very good daughter-in-law. When Minokichi’s mother came to die,—some five years later,—her last words were words of affection and praise for the wife of her son. And O-Yuki bore Minokichi ten children, boys and girls,—handsome children all of them, and very fair of skin.
The country-folk thought O-Yuki a wonderful person, by nature different from themselves. Most of the peasant-women age early; but O-Yuki, even after having become the mother of ten children, looked as young and fresh as on the day when she had first come to the village.
1. Who is O-Yuki, according to what she tells Minokichi on the road — and where is she going?
2. Give two details from this part that quietly hint O-Yuki is not an ordinary woman.
1. A tall, good-looking girl who says she has recently lost both parents and is travelling to Yedo, where poor relations might find her work as a servant.
2. Her ten children are all 'very fair of skin'; and while peasant women age early, she looks as young and fresh after ten children as on the day she arrived — the villagers think her 'by nature different'.
One night, after the children had gone to sleep, O-Yuki was sewing by the light of a paper lamp; and Minokichi, watching her, said:—
“To see you sewing there, with the light on your face, makes me think of a strange thing that happened when I was a lad of eighteen. I then saw somebody as beautiful and white as you are now—indeed, she was very like you.”...
Without lifting her eyes from her work, O-Yuki responded:—
“Tell me about her... Where did you see her?”
Then Minokichi told her about the terrible night in the ferryman’s hut,—and about the White Woman that had stooped above him, smiling and whispering,—and about the silent death of old Mosaku. And he said:—
“Asleep or awake, that was the only time that I saw a being as beautiful as you. Of course, she was not a human being; and I was afraid of her,—very much afraid,—but she was so white!... Indeed, I have never been sure whether it was a dream that I saw, or the Woman of the Snow.”...
O-Yuki flung down her sewing, and arose, and bowed above Minokichi where he sat, and shrieked into his face:—
“It was I—I—I! Yuki it was! And I told you then that I would kill you if you ever said one word about it!... But for those children asleep there, I would kill you this moment! And now you had better take very, very good care of them; for if ever they have reason to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve!”...
Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying of wind;—then she melted into a bright white mist that spired to the roof-beams, and shuddered away through the smoke-hole.... Never again was she seen.
1. What makes Minokichi break his silence after all these years?
2. Why does O-Yuki not kill him, and what does she demand instead?
1. Watching O-Yuki sewing with the lamp on her face reminds him of the beautiful white woman in the hut — she looks so like her that he starts to tell the story, still unsure whether it was a dream.
2. Only because of the children asleep in the room. She orders him to take very good care of them, warning that if they ever have reason to complain of him she will come back and treat him as he deserves — then she melts into white mist and is never seen again.
The whole story hangs on one sentence spoken in a hut: if you ever tell anybody… I will kill you. That is a conditional used as a threat. At the end we look back at what breaking it cost — and that needs a different conditional.
Present simple after if / unless / should; will in the result. Read each one aloud as a threat or a promise.
1. If you (ever / tell) a soul, I (know).
2. Unless the boatman (come back), we (have to) sleep here.
3. If she (not / find) work in the city, her relations (turn) her away.
4. Should the storm (get) worse tonight, the hut (not / hold).
1. ever tell / will know
2. comes back / will have to
3. doesn't (does not) find / will turn
4. get / will not hold
Notice 4: after Should the verb is the bare infinitive — should the storm get — because should is doing the job of if.
Decide whether the result is in the past (would have…) or now (would… still / today).
1. If Minokichi (keep) his word, O-Yuki (still / sit) beside him today.
2. If the old man (not / fall) asleep so fast, he (might / see) the woman too.
3. She (never / spare) him if he (be) as old as Mosaku.
4. If O-Yuki (not / love) the children, she (kill) him that night.
1. had kept / would still be sitting (would still sit)
2. had not fallen / might have seen
3. would never have spared / had been
4. had not loved / would have killed
1 is mixed (a past 'if', a present result — today); 2, 3 and 4 are third conditionals — the result is back in the past.
One each, from: Should · unless · as long as · in case · even if. Number 1 is formal and contains no if.
1. you ever mention this night, I shall hear of it.
2. I will not harm you you break your word.
3. You may stay in this house you are good to my children.
4. Bring the wood inside the storm returns tonight.
5. she looks eighteen, she is not a girl at all.
1. Should
2. unless
3. as long as
4. in case
5. Even if
in case = because it might happen; even if = it makes no difference whether.
In the Speak tab you'll use both halves: the threat as it was made in the hut, and the mixed conditional to say what it cost twenty years later.
Lafcadio Hearn was a Greek-Irish journalist who arrived in Japan in 1890, married into a samurai family, took the name Koizumi Yakumo and spent his last fourteen years writing down the ghost stories ordinary people told him. Kwaidan (1904) was his last collection; he heard Yuki-Onna, he said, from a farmer in Musashi. He died the year it was published.
The story is built on a trap that closes slowly. The threat is made in the first scene, and then the story goes quiet for twenty years — a marriage, ten children, a mother-in-law's dying blessing. We forget the threat. Minokichi forgets it too; that is exactly why he speaks. And when the snow woman finally reveals herself, she does not carry out her sentence. She is stopped by the same thing that stopped her in the hut: pity. The monster keeps her word better than the man keeps his.
This is the heart of the lesson — do all three out loud. The timer is there to keep you going: fill the time with detail rather than escaping it.
Tell Yuki-Onna to someone who has never heard it. Move through the arc: the storm and the hut → the woman in white and her warning → the girl on the road → ten children and a wife who never ages → the lamp, the confession, the mist.
Quote the threat as a conditional, and finish with one mixed conditional about what it cost. Use at least five key words (apprentice, overtake, take shelter, utter, senseless, betrothed, pledge, take a fancy to, confidences, shriek).
Minokichi broke a promise that had kept him alive — but he broke it because he was looking at his wife and thinking she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Build an argument: was the confession a betrayal, an act of love, or simple carelessness? Then argue the opposite side for one minute.
Tell a story — real, famous, or invented — in which everything depends on one promise or one condition, and say what happened when it was tested. Use conditionals to state the condition and to look back at the result.
Stuck for an idea? Pick one of these and run with it: