Ai Lac Cac the Giant

From far away, the buffalo looked like a hill that walked. It belonged to a giant father who lived in the mountains of the Northwest, very long ago. The Thái people call him Ải Lậc Cậc. The Thái are one of Vietnam's ethnic groups.

He was so tall that when he stood up straight, his head touched the white clouds. When he took one step, a whole valley fit under his foot. Yet he was gentle, as gentle as a father who loves his children. He looked across the wide land and saw it still empty, with no rivers for fish to swim in and no fields for rice to grow. So he rolled up his sleeves and set to work.

Ải Lậc Cậc led out his big buffalo. He set the plowshare into the ground and began to cut the very first furrows on the earth.

The buffalo went ahead and he followed, and the giant blade bit deep into the soil. A furrow of his was nothing like the furrows of ordinary farmers. It wound long and crooked, it ran so deep it seemed to have no bottom, and it raced across one hill after another.

Then rain poured down on the headwaters, and water from every direction ran into those deep furrows. The water rose and flowed on and on, far into the distance. So the furrows of Ải Lậc Cậc became two great rivers. The Thái say they are the Đà River and the Red River, which still roar through the Northwest today.

A single streak of the giant father's plow, and a whole river was born.

He plowed and plowed without rest. He turned the soil along one line, then along another. Some of the earth he had just lifted lay in great heaps, not yet harrowed flat. Those huge heaps stayed where they were, lying in the sun and the rain, and grass grew on them, and trees. In time they became tall ranges standing all around, green from top to bottom. Travelers in the Northwest today see mountain after mountain, and the Thái still say it is earth from the furrows of the giant father.

But Ải Lậc Cậc was not finished. He wanted to make one more beautiful thing for the children and grandchildren who would come after him.

He bent down and leveled the earth with his huge hands, making it perfectly even and flat. Where it was rough, he pushed it aside. Where it was low, he filled it in. Then he had the buffalo plow back and forth and harrow the soil until it was loose and fine, smooth as a mat spread among the mountains and forests. When he finished one stretch, he stood up to look, and a great field appeared, wide and open, waiting for the day when people would sow rice.

The first field he finished is called Mường Thanh, in the Điện Biên area. It is the largest field in the region. Having made Mường Thanh, he did not stop. He went on, leveling more and plowing more, and made other great fields too.

The people of the Northwest have kept a playful saying from long ago, to remember the four largest fields of the region. It sounds like a short nursery rhyme. It goes: Thanh first, Lò second, Than third, Tấc fourth. That means the largest is Mường Thanh, the second is Mường Lò, the third is Mường Than, and the fourth is Mường Tấc. The four fields lie as wide as four giant mats spread among the mountains and forests. The Thái believe that all four were made by the hands of Ải Lậc Cậc.

And so the giant father walked across the whole Northwest. Behind him he left two green rivers, ranges of mountains rolling on and on, and fields perfectly flat and fragrant with new earth. He made a land where people could have water to drink, fields to plow, and rice to fill their bellies.

That is why the Thái of Mường Lò love him so dearly. They regard Ải Lậc Cậc as their god of farming, the god who taught the earth to give birth to rice. In the villages, the old people sit by the fire and tell the story of the giant father to the children, so that every child remembers where this land came from.

It is a story of the Thái people of the Northwest, and they tell it with great pride. It says that long ago there lived a father so huge and so gentle that he plowed whole rivers and leveled whole mountains, only to leave his children and grandchildren a rich and green land.

He is still there, in every furrow that turned into a river, in every green mountain, and in every golden grain of rice the Thái families harvest each season.