Text/Wang Minguan
When I was young, I always liked to listen to adults tell stories. Some of the stories, after the adults added oil and vinegar, painted with wonderful descriptions, it is really difficult to forget.
For example, the story of "mouse marrying a relative", although there are many versions of it, the most common is derived from the story of the zodiac.
It was said that one very early day, the Jade Emperor wanted to rank twelve animals first, so he sent cats to inform the other eleven animals, and there were no mice in between. The mouse overheard the cat's message to the cow, so he took the lead and secretly reported to the Heavenly Palace first. The drunken Jade Emperor saw that the rat should be killed, and did not distinguish between true and false, confused and confused at the moment, the rat ranked first, and the first cow who was notified became the second oldest. The cat rushed to the heavenly court after passing the message to the other animals one by one, and the twelve seats had been lined up, and there was no seat for it, so the zodiac mouse became the boss, but there was no cat. Since then, cats and mice have formed a deep hatred.
Later, the mouse himself also felt a little unrighteous, and the martial arts were not the opponents of the cat, so he wanted to resolve the resentment with the cat, so he came up with an idea, asked the weasel to be a matchmaker, and gave his most beautiful daughter to the cat as a wife. The cat also felt that although he did not have his own place in the zodiac, it was worth it to marry the beautiful daughter of the mouse family, so he agreed. So the rat chose the auspicious day of the zodiac on the seventh day of the first lunar month and prepared to marry the daughter of the rat. He stole a woman's embroidered shoes as a palanquin and blew and beat her daughter to the cat's new house.
On the day when the rat marries the daughter, the night of the seventh day of the first lunar month is chosen. After dinner, the rats were about to arrange for their daughters to get married, so they set up lights in the rat's nest, lit candles, and a group of rats freshened up and dressed up, went out of the hole to raise the flag and play umbrellas, beat gongs and drums, and carried the flower palanquin to greet relatives. In the procession of greeting, riding on the back of the toad is the big yellow cat "groom", who wears an official hat, a folding fan in his hand, and his eyes are fixed on a large gold box, showing a greedy look. When the shy and answering bride rat woman, the old rat palanquin, the mischievous gong rat, and the flamboyant mother rat were waving around the market, the "groom" big yellow cat could not wait to make a big obscenity, and one of the pair of rat brothers and rat brothers who sounded the gong in front of the road had been caught by its sharp claws, and the other was biting on its mouth. At this time, the "bride" sitting in the flower palanquin, knowing that the end is coming, crying and crying, and tears flowing, this is an old paper-cut picture of a mouse marrying a woman, vividly describing the anthropomorphic scene of a mouse marrying a woman.
On the day when the rat marries the daughter to do the happy event, it is the time when the old and the new year alternate, the world is busy with new year goods, and people push and grind, making a lot of noise. The Rat King was furious: "People make trouble for me for a day, I make trouble for a year!" Therefore, on the day of the rat's wedding, people do not light the lamp late at night, sprinkle some rice and salt on the ground, and the children must go to bed early, which cannot affect the happy events that the rats do. In the hometown of Shanxi, it is said that the gods of the twenty-third month of the Waxing Moon have gone to heaven, and the rats will begin to move, choose an auspicious day to marry relatives, and for the next three or four days, in the family's Kangtou chimney, every night you can hear the drum music of the rats marrying relatives.
It is said that that night, as long as you put donkey dung eggs in your mouth, quietly lie under the bed or crouch in the kang corner, you can hear the drum music of the mouse marrying the daughter, see the wedding scene of the mouse marrying the daughter, and get the festive gifts distributed by the bride. In fact, the rat was busy for many days, and finally sent the flesh and blood daughter to the cat's stomach. But the world is afraid of the word "serious", at that time, there was a childhood friend who really took this matter seriously. He also didn't know where to find the donkey dung eggs, fortunately it was dry in the winter, it was really a donkey dung egg in his mouth, hidden next to his family's Kangtou chimney, and listened to the "rat marrying daughter" for one night. The next day, even for a long time, he told people that he really heard the squeak of rats marrying their daughters, but he didn't see it or get any festive gifts. Originally, we all knew that it was all adults coaxing children to play on a daily basis, and they didn't take it seriously. Besides, there is a donkey dung egg in the mouth, although it is dried in winter, but it is also very smelly! Many years have passed, and now that I think about it, I still think it's funny.
From the data point of view, the old Chinese folk customs. In the first month of the month, the rat worship activity is held, also known as "rat marrying daughter" and "rat marrying relative". The specific dates vary from place to place, some are on the seventh day of the first lunar month, some are on the twenty-fifth day of the first month, and many areas are on the tenth day of the first lunar month. On the tenth day of the first day of pingyao county in Shanxi, the noodle cake was placed on the root of the wall, which was called "He Mouse Marrying Daughter". Ningyuan, Hunan Province, took the seventeenth day as the "rat marrying daughter" to avoid opening the cabinet, for fear of alarming the rats. The night before, children had placed candy, peanuts, etc. in the shadows, and knocked on large objects such as pot lid dustpans to hypnotize the rats. The next morning, the rat's nest was closed, thinking that from now on the rats could disappear forever. In other areas, on the day of the rat's wife, they go to bed very early in order not to disturb the rat, as the saying goes, "You disturb it for a day, and it disturbs you for a year." ”
Some people believe that the rat marrying a woman as a folk cultural phenomenon expresses the people's desire to eradicate the rat infestation; the reason for the use of the "marriage" method is because it is full of fear of the rat infestation, so it disguises the real purpose by providing food, turning off the lights and forbidding the light, and other acts of flattery that cater to the habits and preferences of rats, which is a choice to seek advantages and avoid harm in a contradictory mentality. Some experts believe that there was no unified "rat eradication day" in ancient times, after the spring for the rat breeding period, in order to avoid rat infestation, people draw a "rat marrying relatives" map, the actual action is to turn off the lights at night to extinguish the fire, trick the children to go to bed early, in order to lure the rats out of the hole to hunt and kill. Some experts believe that the concept of grafting disasters has a long history. Dialect One: "Marry, go." The marriage of the family is called the marriage, and the daughter is married. "The so-called marriage of disasters, wrongs, and rats contains the meaning of expelling disasters, right and wrong, and rats and insects from the house. Folk customs for rats to choose the date of marriage mostly in the wax month 23 to the twenty-fifth day of the first month, this is the peak season of rat breeding, sending rats to marry, means to send rats "out of their own homes", from people's psychological point of view, you can achieve the purpose of eliminating rat infestation; on the other hand, rats marry women are the products of the belief in the goddess of the rat mother in the culture of the year. Rat genus, the head of the twelve branches, "the son is the cathode, the hidden, with the rat with it". The rat is the symbol of the extreme yin, and the waxing moon to the first month is the alternating time between the old and the new year, so choosing this time to marry the rat also has the symbolic significance of removing the old cloth and the new, sending the yin to the sun, and dispelling the disaster Najib.
In any case, the folklore "mouse marrying a woman" is still quite storylike, and the jokes that are elicited through this story have become a good memory of childhood.