The Toad in the Moon, and the Bringer of Rain

In China the toad or frog is a lunar creature: a three-legged toad is said to live in the moon, and the money-toad of the immortal Liu Hai became a popular emblem of wealth and good fortune. Because frogs call before rain and swarm with the coming of water, they were widely associated with rain-making and with the fertility the rains bring, and frog-charms and frog-rituals for rain are found across many cultures. The frog's transformation from water-dwelling tadpole to land-going adult gave it, almost everywhere, a further meaning of rebirth and metamorphosis. Fertility, birth, rain, wealth and transformation gather to the small amphibian of the water's edge.

European folk tradition gives the frog its own transformation story of a different kind: the Grimm brothers' The Frog King, published in their 1812 collection and placed first in it, tells of a princess whose golden ball is retrieved by a frog on the promise of companionship, a promise she resents and finally breaks by throwing the frog against a wall, at which point he becomes a prince; the tale is the ancestor of the now-familiar frog-into-prince motif, though the transformation in the earliest recorded version is closer to a violent release than to the kiss modern retellings prefer.