The Feminist companion to mythology by Larrington Carolyne

Author:Larrington, Carolyne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mythology, Goddesses, Women
Publisher: London : Pandora Press
Published: 1992-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

Weaving Girl

There lived on earth a poor orphan, the youngest of three children, who was ill-treated by his elder brothers and sisters-in-law. They decided to drive him out of the house, under the pretence of setting him up on his own, and offered him the meanest portion of the land along with just one ox. The young man laboured hard and took good care of his ox and became known as the Cowherd. One day the ox suddenly opened his mouth and spoke in the language of men, telling him that many immortal maidens would come down from the sky and would be bathing in a certain pool on earth. If he went and took the clothes of one of them, then that maiden would not be able to return to heaven and could marry him. The Cowherd did as he was told and hid the clothes of one of the women. When the others put on their clothes after their bathe and flew back to heaven, this one could not do so and she consented to live with the Cowherd and be his wife. She was called the Weaving Girl, and was the daughter of Tiandi, the god of the sky.

Years passed and the couple lived contentedly with the Cowherd tilling his land and the Weaving Girl at home looking after the house and the son and daughter that they had produced. Some versions of the story say that eventually her father and mother located her and sent guards to escort her back to heaven, and she was taken away from the Cowherd's house. Other versions of the story have it that she found the garments that had been taken from her on the day that she left heaven to bathe in the pool, and putting them on she found herself floating back to Heaven. Whatever the cause, the Cowherd saw his wife floating up into the sky, and was determined to follow her. He put his children into baskets slung from his carrying pole, and chased after his wife. Without realizing, he too was flying up in the air, and soon he looked as if he would catch up with her, but suddenly he was stopped by a fast flowing river. This was the Milky Way in the sky, or as the Chinese call it the 'Silver River'. Tiandi had created this fast flowing stream by scraping the sky with his hairpin, so that the Cowherd would not catch up with his daughter.

The Cowherd and his children tried desperately to empty the water of the river with ladles, but to no avail, and they stayed disconsolate on the bank of the Milky Way. In time they were all changed to stars, and to this day they can be seen on either side of the Milky Way. But the gods took pity on them, so on one day of the year, the seventh day of the seventh month, all the magpies fly up to the sky and form a bridge so that they are together on the same side.

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