the golden reed pipe

a yao folktale

once upon a time there lived in the mountains a woman and her daughter. the daughter liked to dress in red. hence her name, little red.

one day they were plowing and sowing in the fields. all of a sudden, a gale blew up and in the sky there appeared an evil dragon who stretched down his claws, caught little red in a tight grip and flew off with her towards the west. her mother vaguely heard daughter's words carried on the wind:

oh mother, oh mother, as dear as can be!
my brother, my brother will rescue me!
wiping away her tears, her mother gazed into the sky and said, "but i only have a daughter. who can this brother be?"

she staggered home and had got halfway there when her white hair was caught up in the branches of a bayberry tree growing by the roadside. while she was disentangling her hair, she spotted a red, red berry dangling from a twig. she picked it and swallowed it without thinking.

when she arrived home, the woman gave birth to a boy with a round head and red cheeks. she named the boy little bayberry.

bayberry grew up very quickly and in a few days he was a young lad of fourteen or fifteen.

his mother wanted to ask bayberry to rescue his sister but couldn't bring herself to inflict such a dangerous task on him. all she could do was weep to herself in secret.

one day a crow alighted on the eaves of her house and cried:

your sister's suffering out there, out there!
she's weeping in the evil dragon's lair!
bloodstains on her back,
she's digging rocks with hands so bare!
upon hearing this, bayberry asked his mother, "do i have a sister?"

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