Once there was a swan who possessed beautiful golden feathers. This swan used to live in a pond. Near to the pond, lived a poor woman with her two daughters. Owing to the dire straits of the house, they all were living a miserable life. The swan noticed all this and decided to help the family.

One day, the swan flew away to the poor woman’s house. On seeing this, the woman said that she has nothing to offer to the swan as they are extremely poor. The swan said that she has come to help the family and she will give them her golden feathers one by one which they can sell in the market to get money and meet their expenses. After saying this, the swan shed a feather and flew away. This became a routine and the swan used to visit the family, gave them a feather on every visit and used to fly away.

With the help of this, the family’s financial condition became stable and they started leading a comfortable life. However, greed conquered the mother’s mind and she decided to get all the feathers of the swan at one go. Her daughters disagreed with the thought and said that the swan will be hurt. But the mother was adamant, thinking that the swan might stop returning after a few days and they will become poor once again.

So, the next time when the swan came, the mother caught her and tried to pull out all of her feathers. Due to this, the golden feathers of the swan changed into some absolutely different type of feathers. The golden swan said that she wanted to help the family, but the mother wanted to kill her instead. She said that she don’t want to help them now and the feathers that the mother has got will be nothing but chicken feathers from now onwards. She said that she will never come back to their place and left in anger and pain. The mother felt apologetic for the mistake she had done. The golden swan advised her to not to be greedy in her life ever and flew away.

Moral of the Story: Too much of greed gives nothing.