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AN ARCHIVE OF THE OLDER MYSTERIES
It is told in the Archive of the Older Mysteries of China that one of
the house of Tlang was cunning with sharpened iron and went to the
green jade mountains and carved a green jade god. And this was in the
cycle of the Dragon, the seventy-eighth year.
And for nearly a hundred years men doubted the green jade god, and
then they worshipped him for a thousand years; and after that they
doubted him again, and the green jade god made a miracle and whelmed
the green jade mountains, sinking them down one evening at sunset into
the earth so that there is only a marsh where the green jade mountains
were. And the marsh is full of the lotus.
By the side of this lotus marsh, just as it glitters at evening, walks
Li La Ting, the Chinese girl, to bring the cows home; she goes behind
them singing of the river Lo Lang Ho. And thus she sings of the
river, even of Lo Lang Ho: she sings that he is indeed of all rivers
the greatest, born of more ancient mountains than even the wise men
know, swifter than hares, more deep than the sea, the master of other
rivers perfumed even as roses and fairer than the sapphires around the
neck of a prince. And then she would pray to the river Lo Lang Ho,
master of rivers and rival of the heaven at dawn, to bring her down in
a boat of light bamboo a lover rowing out of the inner land in a
garment of yellow silk with turquoises at his waist, young and merry
and idle, with a face as yellow as gold and a ruby in his cap with
lanterns shining at dusk.
Thus she would pray of an evening to the river Lo Lang Ho as she went
behind the cows at the edge of the lotus marshes and the green jade
god under the lotus marshes was jealous of the lover that the maiden
Li La Ting would pray for of an evening to the river Lo Lang Ho, and
he cursed the river after the manner of gods and turned it into a
narrow and evil smelling stream.
And all this happened a thousand years ago, and Lo Lang Ho is but a
reproach among travelers and the story of that great river is
forgotten, and what became of the maiden no tale saith though all men
think she became a goddess of jade to sit and smile at a lotus on a
lotus carven of stone by the side of the green jade god far under the
marshes upon the peaks of the mountains, but women know that her ghost
still haunts the lotus marshes on glittering evenings, singing of Lo
Lang Ho.
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