The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl (Campfire Story)

Look up. Way up, almost straight overhead. See that bright blue-white star? That's Vega. Now look across that soft, cloudy stripe of light running across the sky. That's the Milky Way, which in China they call the Silver River. On the other side of it, there's another bright star, with a little faint star on each side. That's Altair. And those two stars, Vega and Altair, have a story.

Long ago, a young man named Niulang lived on Earth. He was a cowherd, a poor orphan whose only friend in the world was an old ox. Every day, he took the ox out to the hills to graze, and talked to it, and the ox listened.

Up in Heaven lived seven sisters, the daughters of the Queen Mother of Heaven. The youngest, Zhinü, was a weaver. She wove the clouds, and the colors of the sunset, and all the beautiful patterns in the sky. But she was lonely, sitting at her loom all day, every day.

One day, the old ox spoke to Niulang. Yes, spoke. 'Tomorrow,' said the ox, 'the seven daughters of Heaven will come down to bathe in the lake in the valley. Go there, and you'll find the one you're meant to be with.'

So Niulang went to the lake. And there he met Zhinü. She was tired of weaving the sky. He was tired of being alone. They talked all afternoon, and laughed, and by sunset, they knew they wanted to stay together. Zhinü didn't go back to Heaven. She married Niulang, and they lived happily in his little farmhouse. In time, they had two children, a boy and a girl.

But up in Heaven, the Queen Mother was furious. A daughter of Heaven, married to a cowherd! And with no one weaving the sky, the sunsets had turned gray and plain. She came down from Heaven in a storm and took Zhinü away, back up to the sky.

Niulang was heartbroken. The old ox, who was very old by now, said, 'When I die, make a cloak from my hide. It will let you fly.' And when the ox died, Niulang did just that. He put his two children in two baskets on a carrying pole over his shoulder, wrapped himself in the cloak, and flew up into the sky after his wife.

He had almost caught up with her. He could see her, reaching out for him. But the Queen Mother took a golden hairpin and drew a line across the sky between them. The line became a wide, rushing river of stars. The Silver River. The Milky Way. And Niulang and Zhinü were left on opposite sides, unable to cross.

And there they are still. Zhinü is Vega, on one side of the river. Niulang is Altair, on the other side, with their two children, the little stars, beside him.

But the story doesn't end there. All the magpies on Earth felt so sorry for the two of them that they decided to help. So once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, every magpie in the world flies up into the sky, and they spread their wings and make a bridge across the Silver River. And for one night, Niulang and Zhinü can cross the bridge and be together.

That night is called Qixi, and in China, it's a festival, a little like Valentine's Day. And they say that if it rains on Qixi, the rain is the tears of the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd, crying with happiness to see each other again.

And they say something else, too. If you look closely at magpies in the late summer, you'll notice that some of them are missing feathers on the tops of their heads. That's from all the footsteps of the people crossing the bridge.

Storyteller tips: practice finding Vega and Altair before the campfire, and have a flashlight with a narrow beam ready to point. Ask the group to look for Deneb, the third star of the Summer Triangle; in some tellings it's a magpie, or the bridge itself.

Qixi falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, usually in August.