by Lord Dunsany
AN ARCHIVE OF THE OLDER MYSTERIES
It is told in the Archive of the Older Mysteries of China that one ofthe house of Tlang was cunning with sharpened iron and went to thegreen jade mountains and carved a green jade god. And this was in thecycle of the Dragon, the seventy-eighth year.
And for nearly a hundred years men doubted the green jade god, andthen they worshipped him for a thousand years; and after that theydoubted him again, and the green jade god made a miracle and whelmedthe green jade mountains, sinking them down one evening at sunset intothe earth so that there is only a marsh where the green jade mountainswere. And the marsh is full of the lotus.
By the side of this lotus marsh, just as it glitters at evening, walksLi La Ting, the Chinese girl, to bring the cows home; she goes behindthem singing of the river Lo Lang Ho. And thus she sings of theriver, even of Lo Lang Ho: she sings that he is indeed of all riversthe greatest, born of more ancient mountains than even the wise menknow, swifter than hares, more deep than the sea, the master of otherrivers perfumed even as roses and fairer than the sapphires around theneck 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 ina boat of light bamboo a lover rowing out of the inner land in agarment of yellow silk with turquoises at his waist, young and merryand idle, with a face as yellow as gold and a ruby in his cap withlanterns shining at dusk.
Thus she would pray of an evening to the river Lo Lang Ho as she wentbehind the cows at the edge of the lotus marshes and the green jadegod under the lotus marshes was jealous of the lover that the maidenLi La Ting would pray for of an evening to the river Lo Lang Ho, andhe cursed the river after the manner of gods and turned it into anarrow and evil smelling stream.
And all this happened a thousand years ago, and Lo Lang Ho is but areproach among travelers and the story of that great river isforgotten, and what became of the maiden no tale saith though all menthink she became a goddess of jade to sit and smile at a lotus on alotus carven of stone by the side of the green jade god far under themarshes upon the peaks of the mountains, but women know that her ghoststill haunts the lotus marshes on glittering evenings, singing of LoLang Ho.