Sakurako (Folk Tales)

According to legend, during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, silt was still a small village with only seventeen or eight families, the men in the village boiled salt in the sea, and the women cultivated the peasants, although the days were hard, they were quiet and peaceful. There is a family in the west of the village with the surname of Yu, when the man was in his 30s picking up sea water to boil salt, he suddenly encountered a strange tide and died in the sea, leaving only Yu Cai's mother and daughter, and the two of them served a few acres of thin fields to rely on each other. The mother and daughter lived in two low-rise head houses, and the four walls of the family were also well packed, but Cai's day and night thoughts of her husband who died early, and as a result, she cried and blinded, when the Yu family's daughter Sakurako was only 11 years old, she had to take on the burden of serving the blind mother, sowing the spring and summer planting the autumn harvest, laying grain every year only enough to barely make ends meet, and the days were tight.

Although the Yu family thatched roof house is low, under the eaves every spring warm flower season there are two nests of swallows nesting in mud, chirping, not lively, bringing a lot of happiness to the little cherry blossoms, those pairs of swallows seem to understand the words of the cherry blossoms, as long as the cherry blossoms are in the house, they will fly low around her and murmur honey, and the cherry blossoms are happy in their hearts.

In a few years, although the days were hard, the cherry blossoms of the coarse grain and light rice were like a beautiful big girl.

In May of this year, it was the time when the green and yellow did not pick up, but the sky was broken, it rained for more than two months in a row, without the slightest intention of stopping, seeing that the family in the village could not open the pot, but could only hide in the rain leaking thatched shed and sighed, hungry and anxious to pour a large bowl of rainwater, the family could eat all the food. Sakurako and her wife also struggle to survive every day on a bowl of rice soup that can almost shine in the shadows. From time to time, the filial piety Sakurako quietly poured the few grains of rice into her mother's bowl. Seeing the rain falling like a cry day and night, Sakurako, who had lost a circle of people, could only endure hunger every day, and walked unsteadily in a trance, but she still had to pretend not to be hungry in front of her mother.

One day, Sakurako was looking at a little rice in the crock pot and was worried, when she suddenly heard the mournful chirping of the swallows on the beams of the room, and rushed to the hall to take a look, only to see a milk swallow falling on the ground, and several old swallows cried around the milk swallows that had long since ceased to live, and refused to leave for a long time. Sakurako looked at the dead skinny swallow with tears in her eyes, and then looked at the few swallows in the bird's nest that stretched their necks and could not make a sound, and couldn't help but feel tight, leaking day and night, so that the swallows that could not find grain and insects were also starving to death, let alone living people! I cried out in pain.

Sakurako's heart was soft, she scooped out half a bowl of rice from the crock pot, put it in the pot and slowly cooked it, fished out the rice grains and put them in a tile bowl, put them on the table in the hall, a few old swallows saw it, took the rice grains and flew into the bird's nest to feed them to the dying swallows...

The bird's nest on the beam of Sakura's house was jubilant again, more and more swallows, hundreds of swallows around the cherry blossom girl whispered non-stop, hungry Sakurako was not happy at all, watching the small amount of rice in the crock pot less and less, frowning, almost without the strength to sigh.

At night, sakurako in a trance had a dream, the whole house was full of swallows circling and whispering, the rice grains in the crock pot increased again, and she and her mother actually cooked two bowls of rice and ate a full meal... Hungry and awakened, the weak Sakurako did not know how to sleep for a few days, and it took a lot of effort to move to the crock pot in the back room, and her hand reached into the crock pot, and she couldn't help but widen her eyes, and there were indeed a lot of rice grains in the crock pot.

Sakurako girl braced herself to brush the pot and put water to boil the porridge, and the two of them drank some porridge before they survived the ghost door.

God finally stopped the rain, and the sky was cloudy enough to squeeze out the water. The strange thing is that the rice grains in Sakurako's crock pot scooped out a bowl the next day, Sakurako looked up at the swallow nest on the beam, only to find that she did not know when the swallows had flown away, Sakurako couldn't help but smile bitterly, it was better to go away than to starve to death.

A few days later, Sakurako, who was hiding behind the house, finally discovered the secret that there were fewer grains of rice in the crock pot, and it turned out that a group of swallows had quietly returned from the outside and quietly put them into the crock pot. Sakurako burst into tears, it was really a heavenly road, she every day she poured out some of the extra rice from the crock pot and stomped on the mud to give to the families of those dying in the village, and a few days later, the village was angry again.

Sakurako told the story of the swallow's life to the villagers, and the villagers even called the swallow a sacred bird, and Sakurako was a fairy in the sky who saved the suffering and the distressed. Since then, the swallow has become the savior of the people. In order to let future generations remember the grace of the Cherry Blossom Girl and the Swallow, the surname of the Sakurako is Yu, the swallow is the mouth of the rice mouth, the Silt people will change the Silt to the Yukou, the Yukou people have since regarded the swallow as an auspicious and happy bird, the original scattered people moved together, just at the gate of the Sakurako family to the east to build a street, every household for the swallow to build a nest to provide convenience, thousands of years of continuous expansion, and later became the prestigious Swallow Street. Whenever the spring is warm and blossoming, thousands of swallows, or mud nesting, or catching insects to feed young, or flying high in the clouds, or flying low on the ground, has become a unique scene in Yukou Ancient Town, because swallows eat many insects, and the crops in Yukou area are harvested every year, and the people of the ancient town are prosperous and gradually prosper, which is the last word.