Read the fairy tale Elena loves
The Weaving Maid and the Cowherd
A star-crossed love story so old it became a festival — and a bridge of magpies that still meets once a year to bring two lovers together.
Long ago, a poor but kind-hearted cowherd named Niulang lived with his old ox, working the fields with nothing much to his name. One day, his ox spoke to him — for the ox was no ordinary animal, but a heavenly being sent down to help him — and told him of seven fairy sisters who bathed in a lake nearby, and that if he took the youngest sister’s robe while she swam, she would have to stay and speak with him.
Zhinu, the Weaving Maid
Niulang did as the ox suggested, and the youngest sister, Zhinu — a heavenly weaver who wove the clouds themselves into the sky — stayed behind to find her robe, and found instead a kind, honest young man. The two fell in love, and Zhinu chose to stay on earth and marry him, giving up her place among the stars to live simply, with children of their own, working the land together.
Discovered by the heavens
But Zhinu’s absence did not go unnoticed. The Queen of Heaven, her grandmother, was furious that a star-weaver had abandoned the sky for a mortal life, and sent celestial soldiers to bring her back. Niulang, desperate not to lose her, put their two children in baskets and carried them on a pole across his shoulders, chasing after her into the sky itself, with the help of his ox’s own magic hide.
Just as he nearly reached her, the Queen of Heaven drew a great river across the sky with a single stroke of her hairpin — the Silver River, which we call the Milky Way — separating the two lovers forever, one on each bank, close enough to see each other, never able to cross.
A bridge of magpies
Zhinu wept so bitterly that even the Queen of Heaven was moved. She allowed the two lovers one meeting each year: on the seventh day of the seventh month, magpies from all across the world fly up and form a bridge with their own bodies across the Silver River, so Niulang and Zhinu can cross and be together, if only for a single night.
Even now, on that night each year, people across China look up and remember them — and if it rains, the story says, those are the tears of the two lovers, happy at last to be reunited, even for so short a time.
Shanghai Lullaby
Play this softly while you read this tale aloud — a traditional handplayed lullaby from Shanghai, China.
More stories, more lullabies
This is one tale in a growing collection of traditional stories from around the world — each one paired, where we can, with a real lullaby from the same culture.