Mulberry Silk Legend

Reading a book entitled Chinese Mythology: An Introduction by author Anne Birrell, I came across a metamorphosis story involving a horse, mulberry trees, and the silkworm. Confusing as it may seem to connect all three topics into one story, I realized through my reading that a myth does exist about all of these collectively. By researching and reading several sources, I realized the story has a few variations but has the same basic message. 

The myth begins with a father and his daughter who own a horse. The father travels far away which causes the daughter to miss him dearly. She jokingly asked the horse one day if he could locate her father and bring him home. In return, she would marry the horse. At once, the horse took to the countryside to find the father. When he brought him back to the house, the daughter was overjoyed but appeared to have forgotten about her promise with the horse. The father eventually noticed that the horse was not eating well and would fidget whenever the daughter was near. Realizing that this was no coincidence, he asked the daughter if she had spoken to the horse. She confessed that she had promised the horse her hand in marriage. The father decided to kill the horse to protect his daughter. The next time the girl left her house, the dead horse rose and wrapped her, transforming her into a silk worm cocoon. The father searched for the daughter but could not find her. Days later, the neighbor noticed the odd cocoon and watched the cocoon transform into what is now known as the mulberry tree. Legend says that every mulberry tree descends from this original tree. 

A few variations exist for this story. First, in some versions of the story, the daughter’s mother replaces the character of the neighbor. The mother may be added in order to establish the family in the story better. In addition, the mother’s role in these versions is to help guide the daughter. Without the mother, the story truly focuses on how lonely and desperate the daughter is alone at home. Her desperation towards the horse is more understandable in a context where she is deeply depressed from feeling abandoned by her father. Another variation is the reason why the father kills the horse. In a few versions, he kills the horse solely to protect his daughter from having to keep her betrothal promise, but in other versions the reason is much more vividly explained. In these versions, the father kills the daughter in fear that she will disgrace the family by marrying an animal. This was added to stories in order to add a moral aspect by saying that marrying an animal was wrong and frowned upon in culture. This is similar to how American children’s stories may focus on lying or stealing as being an immoral act that results in punishment. The father is still trying to protect her but the main focus in these versions is to protect his family’s name. This hints at the importance of an unscathed family name in society at the time. 
The story could have different connotations when told to an adult audience. An interesting interpretation of the story is given through Freudian analysis. In this interpretation, the story is built from adolescent fear and sexual desire. The daughter, therefore, desires the father but is too young to understand the desire. The girl places the father into two counterparts, her father and her horse. Her actual father is perceived as the good and innocent while the family's horse represents the bad and unknown aspect of her desires. When the father chooses to kill the horse, he is essentially killing the bad father. The silkworm and mulberry results of the story would be the fruit of the marriage between the girl and the horse.
Another interesting perspective on the story is the difference between the natural world and the magical world. The fact that audiences listening to the story may have interpreted the story as a true event that had occurred centuries before is telling of the Chinese culture. When analyzing stories in different time periods from the original era of the story, the reader needs to interpret the consciousness level intended for the story and whether the story was meant for the natural or magical world. This story can be interpreted as originating from the magical side of the mind to people in the twenty first century, but people in earlier time periods may not have seen the story in this light. 

The story is essentially an origins legend involving the metamorphosis of a girl into a silkworm and then into a mulberry tree by means of a horse’s skin. Though this may seem odd, the mulberry tree is actually the only food source for silk worms. The silk made from silk worms is a trade asset to China as well as other nations. The horse ties into the story well because horses were the means to transport this product across Asia on the Silk Road. Stories of the origin of some object are generally created in order to incorporate that item into culture as deeply as possible, creating the façade that the item is purely of that culture. The mulberry tree and the silk worms that feed from the tree were an important source of income making the two important objects to incorporate into  Chinese origins. With this knowledge in mind, the story does not seem as random. 

Birrell, Anne.  Chinese Mythology: An Introduction. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993. Print.

Miller, Alan. "The Woman Who Married a Horse: Five Ways of Looking at a Chinese Folktale." Asian Folklore Studies. 54.2 (1995): 275-305. Print.

Walters, Derek. Chinese Mythology: An Encyclopedia of Myth and Legend. San Francisco: The Aquarian Press, 1992. Print.