The Goose with the Golden Feathers

4-6 min read
12 pages

The goose with the golden feathers, a Jataka tale to read aloud. One feather at a time is enough to live on, until somebody decides it is not.

A man died and left a wife and three daughters with nothing, and they lived by working for the neighbours, which is a thin way to live.

The man had been born again as a goose whose feathers were gold, and he remembered his family, and he was sorry for them.

So he flew to their house and sat on the roof beam, and when they came out he told them who he was.

«Take one feather,» he said, «whenever you need it. Sell it. It will keep you.» And he pulled out one gold feather with his beak and left it on the step.

They sold the feather, and it kept them for months. He came back and left another, and another after that, and the family began to live like people who had enough.

Then the mother began thinking.

«He is a bird,» she said to her daughters. «Birds fly off. One day he will not come back, and where will we be? Next time he comes we will take the lot.»

The daughters said no. They said he had never given them any reason to. The mother waited until they were out.

When the goose came the next time she called him down into the house, and she shut the door, and she caught him with both hands and pulled out every feather he had.

And each feather, as it came away, turned into an ordinary white one — because a gift taken by force is not a gift, and the gold went out of them the moment she closed her hands.

She had a bald, frightened bird and a pile of white feathers, and nothing she could sell.

She put him in a barrel and fed him, hoping the gold would grow back. It grew back white. And when his wings were strong enough he went out through the window, and none of them ever saw him again.

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Text source: From the Jataka tales, the Indian collection of birth stories written down in Pali from around 300 BC. Public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

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The Goose with the Golden Feathers

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