My Lord Bag of Rice

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My Lord Bag of Rice is a Japanese fairy tale collected by Yei Theodora Ozaki in Japanese Fairy Tales.^[1] A version of this tale also appears in A Book of Dragons by Ruth Manning-Sanders.

[edit] Synopsis

A warrior set out in search of adventures. When he went to cross a bridge, he saw a dragon lying over it. He nevertheless went on. When he passed the dragon, he heard a voice calling him: the dragon had turned into a man. He told the warrior that he was the Dragon King of the lake, and he needed his aid against a centipede that was carrying off his children and grandchildren in the night. The warrior offered to go to its home, but the dragon said it attacked every night, and it was best to wait for it. The dragon took him to his castle, and fed him a feast. The centipede came, with two glowing fires for its eyes. The warrior told them to bring his bow and arrows, and he realized he had only three arrows left. He shot off two, and they were harmless to it, but he had heard that saliva was deadly to centipedes, so he let the centipede come very close and then spat on his arrow before shooting. The centipede was killed. The dragon king gave him a bag of rice that never emptied, a cooking pot that did not need a fire, and a bolt of silk that was never shorter. From this, the warrior was called "My Lord Bag of Rice."

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