Gaster's exemplum No. 381 preserves a cascading folktale from the Midrash Aseret HaDibrot, the Midrash on the Ten Commandments, all arranged around the commandment to honor one's father.
A man on his deathbed told his son to cast bread upon the waters each day, citing Ecclesiastes 11:1. The son obeyed. Every morning he threw a loaf into the sea. One fish began eating these loaves regularly and grew enormous — so large that it began to terrorize the smaller fish.
The smaller fish complained to their king, Leviathan, the great sea-creature of Jewish lore. Leviathan summoned the giant fish and demanded an explanation. The fish admitted it: a man was feeding him bread each day. When Leviathan learned the man was fulfilling a dying father's command, the king of the sea spat three times into the fish's mouth. This blessing passed to the fish, and the fish, returning to shore, spat into the man's own mouth.
From that moment the man understood the language of every bird, every beast, and all seventy languages of humankind.
Exhausted from his sea voyage inside the giant fish, he lay down on the shore to sleep. Two birds flew over — a mother and her fledgling. The young one said it would pick out his eyes. The mother warned it not to, but the fledgling insisted. The man, understanding every word, caught the young bird. The mother, desperate, promised to show him where King Solomon had once hidden a treasure. He agreed, freed the young bird, and followed the mother to the hoard.
The story multiplies. The mother bird killed her own disobedient fledgling, then revived it with a magical herb. A passing man saw the herb and said he was going to Jerusalem to revive the dead. On the way, he tried it first on a dead lion — which revived and killed him.
Meanwhile, the first man brought donkeys to carry Solomon's treasure home. Among the donkeys was one cantankerous beast who plotted with the others to cause him to lose the treasure at the town gate. But the man, still hearing the speech of animals, understood the plot, beat the lazy donkey until it rose, and brought the treasure home safely.
His wife pressed him for the secret. In his stable, his horse wept, and a rooster told the horse, "My master has only one wife and cannot control her. I have ten wives and they are all afraid of me. He should teach her to fear him." When the wife asked again, the man took up a stick and disciplined her.
The Midrash on the Ten Commandments preserves this entire cascade as an elaboration of one mitzvah: honor your father. Because the son honored his dying father's strange command and cast bread on the waters, he received the language of creation, a king's treasure, and the wisdom to protect them. Every act of honoring a parent, the midrash teaches, opens a door the honoring child cannot even see.