Five Buffaloes, Six Posts

Five buffaloes walked into the yard. Six posts stood waiting.

One look at those two numbers is enough to see that something does not add up. Yet that one mismatch, born in a corner of a yard at the foot of a mountain, would one day ring out in the calls of two kinds of forest birds.

Vietnamese storytellers say that long ago, in a hamlet at the foot of a mountain, there lived a strong farmer named Ba. He had no fields of his own. He worked five sào of rice fields on shares for a wealthy landowner in the next village. A sào is a Vietnamese unit for measuring farmland.

Ba had worked the land for that family for a long time. He was honest and hardworking, and at every harvest he handed over his share of the rice in full. The landowner trusted him, so he also gave him a herd of buffaloes to raise. In time, the herd grew to five.

From the day he took on the buffaloes, his days were busier than before. Besides the fields he worked on shares, he took the whole herd out to graze every day. In the late afternoon, the five buffaloes followed him back to the hamlet at the foot of the mountain.

In a corner of the yard stood the posts used to tether the buffaloes at night. There was one post for each animal. But in that row of posts was something the farmer had not yet gotten around to tidying. One post had nearly broken, so he drove in another to replace it. The new post was already in use. The old one was still standing there.

Anyone who knew about the old post would see nothing strange. But someone looking at the row for the first time could easily think otherwise.

Then the landowner died. His only daughter inherited the fields, the livestock and all of his other property. She knew that Ba was looking after a herd of buffaloes, but she did not know exactly how many there were. One afternoon, while he was still out with the herd, she came to his house to see.

She walked to the corner of the yard.

The herd had not come back yet, so only the row of posts stood silent in the yard. She could not count the buffaloes. The only thing she could count was the row of tethering posts.

She looked along the row and counted slowly. One post, two posts, three posts, four posts, five posts, and then six posts. She counted again from the beginning. The answer was still six.

From six posts, she reasoned that there had to be six buffaloes. She did not know that one of the posts had nearly broken. It had been replaced by a new one, but nobody had pulled it out yet. The old post stood silent. It could not tell anyone why it was still there.

As evening came on, Ba brought the herd home. One by one, the buffaloes stepped into the yard, each finding its own place out of habit. The young woman stood waiting and counted with every step. One buffalo, two, three, four, five. The last one was in, and no more came behind it.

She did not stop at one count. She walked along the herd, counting from the first to the last. Then she turned back and counted once more. Every time, she stopped at the fifth buffalo.

Every animal was in, and the row still had one post to spare.

She asked Ba where the missing buffalo was.

The farmer was surprised. He said the herd had only ever had five, and he had looked after every one of them.

The young woman pointed at the row of posts. If there were only five buffaloes, she asked, then why were there six posts?

He explained right away. One post had nearly broken. He had driven in another to replace it, but had not yet pulled up the old one. Six posts did not mean six buffaloes.

The young woman still insisted that one was missing, and told him to go and find it.

“Five buffaloes, so why six posts?”

She pointed at the posts and kept muttering those words, over and over. Then she flared up. Honest and wrongly doubted, the farmer walked off into the forest in annoyance, and she followed close behind. Their quarrel left the corner of the yard along with them.

In the end, the farmer and the young woman both turned into birds.

Those two kinds of birds are found in the forested mountains of Thái Nguyên, where the story is said to have taken place. They feed from dusk until first light.

When one mountainside has gone dark, a bird call rises. To those who hear it, it sounds just like a question that refuses to stop.

“Five buffaloes, six posts.”

From the mountain on the other side, another bird answers. Its call sounds like these words.

“Catch the girl, tie the post.”

That is only how human ears hear birdsong and shape it into words. There are two calls, one calling and one answering. One comes from this side of the mountains, the other from the far side.

People named each kind of bird after its call. One became the bird called Five Buffaloes, Six Posts. The other became the bird called Catch the Girl, Tie the Post.

From dusk until first light, the two birds still feed on either side of the mountains. Now and then, a call rises on this side. A call answers from the other.

One bird calls.

“Five buffaloes, six posts.”

An answer comes from the far mountainside.

“Catch the girl, tie the post.”