The Returning Swallow
An old woman's swallows return to her rafters each year. When her son moves her to a new city home, the swallows find no mistress and patch the old beam with mud, waiting. When she returns, one swallow has died among the rafters, leaving a fresh handful of mud like a nest just begun.
In Yue there was an old woman surnamed Wang, widowed and living alone in an old house for decades. Shabby though it was, a swallow's nest sat on the beam; a pair of swallows came in spring and left in autumn, never once failing, year after year. Living alone, the woman would talk to the swallows as if to family.
She had a son, an official away on his posts, who returned to visit once a year. Seeing his mother in a run-down house, he could not bear it, and bought a new residence in the city, bringing her there to care for her. The woman was attached to the old house, and more to the swallows on the beam, but not wishing to go against her son, she went with him. As she left, she looked up at the nest and murmured: “When you come next spring, I will not be here. Take good care of yourselves.”
In the city, fine as the house was, the woman was constantly out of spirits, thinking day by day of the swallows of the old house. Her son took it for an old person's longing for home, and merely consoled her.
The next spring the woman suddenly fell ill and longed keenly to return. Her son supported her back to the old house to look upon it. Opening the door, they found the rooms thick with dust; but looking up at the beam, they saw, beside the old nest, a band of fresh mud, moist as new, shaped like a nest begun but not finished. And of the pair of swallows, only one remained, crouched upon the fresh mud, wings folded, eyes closed; touched, it was already stiff — it had died here long since.
The woman held the stiffened swallow and wept: “Were you waiting for me? I have failed you.” That night she dreamed a woman in white came to thank her, saying: “For thirty years' shelter beneath your eaves I have no way to repay; I would carry mud year after year, and keep this old beam for you.” The woman woke, her pillow wet with tears. Before long she too passed, and by her dying wish was buried beside the old house, facing the swallows.
The Chronicler of the Strange says: The swallow is a small bird, yet it knows gratitude. Thirty years' shelter beneath the eaves was but the kindness of a meal, yet the swallow repaid it by keeping guard unto death. The woman moved and the swallow waited, carrying mud to patch the beam, and at last died in devotion. There are those who receive a lifetime's keeping and yet abandon their parents in some new mansion — set beside this swallow, must they not blush? The nest upon the beam is like kindness within the heart; a nest may be emptied, but kindness must not. Beneath an empty nest there is still leftover mud; where shall the ungrateful hide themselves?