164817Story 21: The Legend of the Torch Festival

164817

Story 21: The Legend of the Torch Festival

The Legend of the Torch Festival

Author: Anonymous

Every year on June 24th of the lunar calendar, it is the traditional festival of the Yi people – the Torch Festival.

When night falls, from the stone forest to Dieshui, from Guishan Mountain to Changhu Lake, countless torches illuminate the night sky and people’s smiling faces. Passionate singing and the powerful sound of the big three-stringed instrument are intertwined. The village is immersed in In the midst of holiday joy…

There is such a magical and touching legend circulating about the “Torch Festival”.

In ancient times, there was a castle on a high mountain. There lived a chieftain in the castle. He was born with a pair of mouse eyes, broom eyebrows and a silver carp mouth, paired with a pointed chin and a thin face. It was covered with pockmarks, and people gave him the nickname “Black Evil God”. This “Black Evil God” does all kinds of evil. He maintains a large group of servants and thugs, and brutally rules and exploits the Yi people. He cleverly created a name and levied excessive taxes. When he gave birth to a child, he had to pay a capitation tax. When he went to the mountains to hunt, he had to pay mountain rent. When he went to the river to fish, he had to collect fishing donations… All kinds of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes made the people really breathless. In order to resist the cruel rule of this “black evil god”, people held many uprisings. However, the chieftain’s strong castle was difficult to capture, and many people were captured and executed alive.

There was a smart and capable shepherd named Zaka who came up with a way to outwit the Tusi Castle. He secretly contacted the poor people of Jiujiuzhai and decided to lock the sheep in stables from June 17th and feed them only some water every day without feeding them any fodder. They would starve for seven days and seven nights. The rebels rushed to make shuttle sticks at night, cut bamboo sticks, sharpened machetes and axes, and tied torches to the horns of each goat. Everyone agreed to revolt on the night of June 24th. On this night, when the moon had not yet appeared and the breeze in the forest was blowing gently, only a long horn was heard, and the first “torch mother” was used as the trumpet. The rebels immediately opened the sheep stable door, lit thousands of torches tied to the sheep’s horns, and drove the sheep to attack the castle of the “Black Evil God”.

The countless sheep were already starving, so they rushed up the mountain to eat leaves and grass by the light of the fire. Zaka led the revolting people and rushed towards the castle bravely. The sound of drums and shouts of killing shook the heaven and earth. The “Black Evil God” hurriedly boarded the castle and saw that the mountains and fields had turned into a sea of fire. People surrounded the castle from all directions and had begun to attack the city gate. The “Black Evil God” ordered his servants and thugs to guard the city gate, but he quietly got into the hole and prepared to escape. At this time, various rebel armies had broken through the castle and poured in. People searched everywhere, but they couldn’t find the “Black Evil God”. Later, Zaka captured the chief steward for interrogation. The chief steward, who was afraid of death, knelt on the ground, kowtowed and begged for his life, and led Zaka and his party to the entrance of the cave where the chieftain was hiding.

Zaka then asked the chief steward to go down into the cave first and ask the “Black Evil God” to come out and surrender. The butler, who usually acted like a bully, was so frightened that he collapsed to the ground and couldn’t get up. Everyone was looking around, and suddenly, a dagger flew out of the hole. Zaka, with his sharp eyesight and quick hands, swung his machete and knocked down the dagger.

Seeing that the “Black Evil God” could not survive, Zaka and everyone decided to burn him to death with a torch. So with an order, thousands of torches immediately piled up a hill around the cave, and the raging fire burned even more fiercely. In a moment, the land was burned red, and the evil-doing chieftain “Black Evil God” Just like that, he was buried in the torch. In order to commemorate this victory in the struggle against tyrannical rule, the 24th day of the sixth lunar month is designated as the “Torch Festival”.