Bui Cam Ho and Eel Porridge

At the foot of the Hồng Lĩnh mountains, in the land of Hà Tĩnh, a small temple sits in the shade of the trees. Nearby, a stream still runs quietly through a cleft in the rocks, clear and cool, watering the fields below. People here say that water did not find its way there by itself. More than 500 years ago, an old official came home to his village. He showed the people how to build a dam and dig channels, and how to lead the water down from the mountain to a whole stretch of fields that had been dry all year round. That official was named Bùi Cầm Hổ.

Bùi Cầm Hổ was a real person. He lived in the time of the Lê dynasty, around the 15th century. He served as a censor at court, an official whose duty was to speak plainly and to look into what was right and what was wrong. He held that post under three emperors of the Lê dynasty. People remember him for his honesty and for his care for ordinary people. But later generations love one story about him above all, and they keep passing it on. It is the story of a pot of eel porridge from the market. This story is a folktale, not a page from the court records. It is told in more than one version.

The tale goes that as a young man, Bùi Cầm Hổ was very poor. He left his home village and traveled all the way to the capital to study. The capital was Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. He had hardly a coin in his pocket. Every day he walked through the market and heard all the talk of buyers and sellers. One day the whole market was stirred up over a sad piece of news.

There was a wife whose husband had just come home after a long time away. Out of love for him, she bought eels at the market and cooked a pot of hot eel porridge to give him strength. The husband finished the porridge. A little while later he suddenly felt unwell, and then he died. The whole village looked at one another in fear. Everyone thought of the most frightening thing of all. People told one another that the wife must surely have put something into the porridge to harm her husband. So the wife was arrested and held in jail, suspected of killing her husband. She cried out that she was innocent until her voice was hoarse. She had only cooked an ordinary pot of eel porridge, just as she always did. But no one would believe her.

When Bùi Cầm Hổ heard the story, something in it troubled him. Here was a wife who sat blowing on the fire to cook porridge for her husband, home at last from far away. Why would she ever want to hurt him? And if she had not harmed him, why would a healthy man suddenly collapse, right after a bowl of eel porridge? The porridge had been cooked with eels bought at the market. So the secret, if there was one, had to lie in those very eels.

With that thought, he did not sit still. He made his way to the very part of the market where eels were sold. He stood among the buyers and studied each eel in the baskets and basins, watching very closely. And then he noticed something that hurried sellers and hurried buyers could easily miss. Every now and then, among the ordinary eels, there was one that looked almost exactly the same. It was just as yellow, just as slippery, and just as long. But this one had a few black spots on its neck. Whenever it was lifted up, it raised its head straight up like a small snake. This kind was not a harmless eel for making porridge. Anyone who ate it would be poisoned.

Now everything began to grow clear. That day at the market, among the wriggling mass of eels, the wife had bought a poisonous eel by mistake. It had been mixed in with the others. She never suspected a thing. She cleaned the eels, blew on the fire, and cooked the porridge with all her heart, just as she had so many times before. Her husband's death was a heartbreaking accident, and in no way a murder. The wife was completely innocent.

Knowing the truth was a relief, but making people believe it was another matter. Bùi Cầm Hổ was then only a poor student in faded, threadbare clothes. Even so, he boldly went to the magistrate's office. He asked them to hold off on judging the wife, so that he could explain the matter clearly. He caught one of those poisonous eels and set it beside an ordinary eel. He showed the officials the differences with their own eyes. Here was the neck with its black spots. Here was the head raised up like a snake. It was this creature, and not the wife, that had caused the tragedy.

With proof so plain, the long injustice melted away. The wife was cleared of the charge. She was untied and set free to go home to her family. An innocent woman had very nearly been found guilty of a crime she did not commit. She was saved only because a poor student took the trouble to stand by a basket of eels at the market and look very carefully.

The story reached Emperor Lê Thái Tổ, and he was deeply impressed. Here was a young man with no title and no power. With nothing but a sharp eye and a thoughtful mind, he had cleared away an injustice that had seemed impossible to undo. The emperor felt that this was exactly the talent the country's courts needed. So Bùi Cầm Hổ was appointed an official by special exception, even though he had never sat any of the great examinations. From then on, he became a judge known far and wide for his fairness. He looked into every case to the very end. He was never quick to believe rumors, and never quick to accuse anyone before he had seen the truth clearly.

What made Bùi Cầm Hổ who he was had nothing to do with magic. Where others walked right past a pot of porridge or a heap of eels at the market, he stopped and looked. Where others heard a rumor and believed it at once, he asked one more question: why? That careful eye, and a heart that could not bear to see anyone wrongly accused, stayed with him through his whole life as an official.

Later, when he was old, he went back to his home village at the foot of the Hồng Lĩnh mountains. He did not rest. Instead, he took on another down-to-earth task for the people: bringing water. He showed the villagers how to build a stone dam and dig channels. Together they led the water from the mountain stream to more than 1,000 plots of farmland that had always been thirsty. With water in the fields, the crops grew well, and the villagers ate better and lived more comfortably.

And people in the area still say that the stream running quietly beside the small temple in Hà Tĩnh today is the very water he left behind. The temple where he is worshipped was recognized as a national historical and cultural relic in 1992. Every year in early spring, people from the area come back here to burn incense. They remember an official who lived his whole life with honesty. Whoever stands by that stream and hears the water babbling over the stones may quietly recall the old story. There was a poor student, a basket of eels at the market, and a gaze slow enough and careful enough to save a human life.