The Yün-men chuanis an obscure work which does not deserve obscurity. It is actually a Ming chantefable, a fact which already gives it great value, since only a handful of works survive from the flourishing oral literature of that dynasty. But it has, in addition, a striking incidental importance: it proves to be the immediate source of a well-known Ming vernacular short story. It thus neatly demonstrates a point on which there has been a good deal of speculation—that Ming writers on occasion created their stories by taking their scissors to existing chantefables—and provides a unique opportunity to study the process.