The Sun, the Moon and the Wind: The Indian Folk Tale Retold for Bedtime
Quick answer: The Sun, the Moon and the Wind retold for bedtime: three children dine out, only the Moon remembers her mother, and a star decides how each will shine. A Deccan tale.
The Sun, the Moon and the Wind go out to dinner with their uncle and aunt, Thunder and Lightning, and their mother, a distant star, waits up for them. What each child brings home decides how the world has known them ever since. It is the gentlest of the why-the-world-is-so tales, and it ends with the Moon.
The story
Long ago the Sun, the Moon and the Wind, who were brothers and sister, went out to dine with their uncle and aunt, Thunder and Lightning. Their mother, one of the far stars, stayed at home and waited up for them, as mothers do.
The dinner was splendid. The Sun ate everything set in front of him and thought of no one else. The Wind did the same, and blew about the table besides. But the Moon, whenever a fine dish came round, slipped a little of it under her long fingernails, thinking of her mother waiting in the dark.
When they came home the star asked what they had brought her. “Brought you?” said the Sun. “I went out to enjoy myself, not to fetch and carry.” “Brought you?” said the Wind. “I went to dine, not to shop.” But the Moon shook out her fingernails, and there on the table lay a small feast, a little of everything, still warm.
Then their mother said to the Sun, “You thought only of yourself. From now on your rays shall burn, and people will cover their heads when you pass.” To the Wind she said, “You shall blow in the hot dry season and parch everything you touch, and no one will love you.” And to the Moon she said, “Because you remembered me, you shall always be cool and calm, and people will bless you and sit out under you in the evenings.” And so it has been ever since.
Where it comes from
The tale is from the Deccan, written down by Mary Frere in Old Deccan Days in 1868 from her ayah's telling. Stories that explain the sun's heat and the moon's coolness through a family quarrel are told in many parts of India; this is the version that reached English first.
What the tale is about underneath
It is a story about remembering the person who is not in the room. The Sun and the Wind are not wicked, only full, and the tale punishes fullness that forgets. The Moon's kindness is small and slightly comic, food under the fingernails, and that smallness is the point: what the mother wanted was not a feast but proof of being thought of. Children who hear it look up at the moon differently.
Reading aloud
Read the dinner quickly and the homecoming slowly, and let the Moon's fingernails be the surprise.
Write your own
Borrow the explanation tale. Take something everyone knows, that the sun burns and the moon is cool, and invent the family scene that made it so. The engine is three siblings and one absent parent, and the test is what each one carried home. Keep the kind act small and a little odd; the fingernails are what make the story stick.
What writers can take from this
- Make the mother's waiting felt: a lamp, a doorway, the dark.
- Let the Sun and the Wind be greedy in different ways, one eating, one blowing.
- Show the fingernails once at dinner so the ending is earned.
- Say each fate as a fact about tomorrow's weather.
- End looking at the moon, if there is a window.
Try it yourself
Write a story that explains one ordinary fact about the world, why a thing is hot or cold, loud or quiet, through a family evening in which three siblings are tested by what they bring home to someone who waited. Make the kind act small and slightly strange.
Questions
What is the moral of The Sun, the Moon and the Wind?
Remember the people who are not at the table. The Moon is blessed not for a great deed but for thinking of her mother while she ate, and the tale turns the sky itself into the record of who remembered.
Is The Sun, the Moon and the Wind suitable for a 3-year-old?
Yes. It is short, has no villain, and its punishments are simply the sun's heat and the hot wind, which a small child already knows. It is a good tale for a night when the moon is visible.
Where does The Sun, the Moon and the Wind come from?
It is a Deccan folk tale from southern India, recorded in English by Mary Frere in Old Deccan Days in 1868 from the telling of her ayah, Anna Liberata de Souza.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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