The story of The Crane Wife

"The Crane Wife" is actually an old Japanese folk tale.

While there are quite a few variations of the tale, a common version is that a poor man finds a wounded crane on his doorstep, sobbing with an arrow sticking out of its side.

The man takes the bird and nurses it back to health.

After he releases the crane, a woman appears at his doorstep with whom he falls in love and marries.

Because they need money, his wife offers to weave wondrous clothes out of silk that they can sell at the market, but only if he agrees never to watch her making them.

The husband agrees.

The couple begins to sell the clothes and live a very comfortable life, but he soon gets greedy and makes her weave them more and more. Even though he soon realizes the more she weaves, the more ill she becomes.

He eventually peeks in to see what she is doing to make the silk she weaves so desirable.

He is shocked to discover that at the loom is a crane plucking feathers from her own body and weaving them into the loom.

Seeing him, the crane flies away and never returns.

The End.

The moral of the story is never walk in on a girl doing her make-up.