The Legend of Saint Giong

In the Gia Lâm area, there are still clumps of bamboo unlike any ordinary bamboo. Their stems are not fresh green but a glossy gold, as if fire had licked them long ago and never quite gone out. The elders here call it tre đằng ngà, ivory bamboo. It is gold, the story goes, because thousands of years ago an iron horse galloped across these fields, breathing flames that lit up the sky. Its rider was Saint Gióng, whom the Vietnamese call Thánh Gióng.

People of old honored Gióng as Phù Đổng Thiên Vương, the Heavenly King of Phù Đổng. This is an old tale retold, not an event anyone could dig up and see. Vietnamese people have told it for thousands of years, and it has never grown old.

It was the age of the Hùng Kings. The story goes that under the sixth Hùng King, the Ân invaders came with a great army. War spread everywhere, and the people were frightened and unsettled. The king sent envoys through every village to call for people of talent, anyone who could help the country drive the invaders back.

In the village of Phù Đổng, in Gia Lâm district, lived a kind old couple who led a simple life and had no children. One day the old woman went out to the fields. In the middle of a rice field she saw a huge footprint, unlike any ordinary person's. She stood looking at it, then stepped up and set her own foot inside it to try it for size. Back home, she found she was with child. Twelve months later, instead of the usual nine months and ten days, she gave birth to a sturdy baby boy.

But the boy was very strange. At one year old, he lay still. At two, he lay still as before. At three, he had never once spoken or smiled. His bright eyes watched everything, but his lips stayed silent. His parents worried and did not know what to do.

Then came the day the king's envoy passed through Phù Đổng, calling loudly for people of talent to fight the invaders. That very day, the boy in his cradle suddenly stirred. He turned to his mother and, for the first time in his life, called out to her. His voice was clear and calm, as if he had known how to talk for a very long time.

He told his mother to go and invite the envoy in. Amazed, hardly believing her ears, she still hurried out. The envoy came in, heard a three-year-old talking from his cradle, and was astonished too. In a firm voice, the boy told him to go back and ask the king to forge him an iron horse, an iron rod and a suit of iron armor. That was all. The envoy went straight back to tell the king.

From that day on, the boy changed. He ate, and ate without stopping. As soon as he emptied the bowl of rice his mother handed him, he looked up for more. The old couple alone could never find enough rice to feed him. Word spread through the village, then through the villages nearby. Family by family, the people of Phù Đổng began bringing rice. Those with little gave a little. Those with more gave more. The whole village raised Gióng together.

He grew as fast as bamboo after rain. Clothes that fit him one day were too tight the next morning. His arms and legs grew long, his shoulders broad. The village of Phù Đổng watched the child grow before its eyes, faster than anyone had ever seen.

Then the iron horse arrived. The iron rod arrived. The iron armor arrived. As the story tells it, Gióng stood up. He stretched. With that one stretch, in a single moment, the boy from Phù Đổng shot up into a giant warrior, proud and full of strength. He put on the armor and climbed onto the back of the iron horse.

The iron horse gave a great neigh and breathed fire, and the flames lit up a whole corner of the sky. And Saint Gióng rode straight into battle.

The battle against the Ân was fierce. The fire-breathing horse charged the invaders, and Saint Gióng swept his iron rod across the field until they scattered in every direction. But in the middle of the fight, the iron rod broke. It snapped right in his hand, leaving him without a weapon. At such a moment, an ordinary man might have stepped back. Saint Gióng did not. He looked around and saw a clump of ivory bamboo by the roadside. He reached out and pulled up the whole clump, the stems bursting apart and earth flying from the roots. Holding it like a fighting staff, he went on driving back the invaders. Flames from the horse licked along the stems, and the bamboo was scorched a glossy gold.

In that battle, the Ân army melted away.

When the clash of weapons fell silent, Saint Gióng stopped. But he did not go home to Phù Đổng. He did not go back to his parents. He did not stay to be rewarded. He rode straight toward Mount Sóc, in today's Sóc Sơn area. At the top, he took off his armor and left it there. Then he rode his horse straight up into the sky. He did not look back. He said no word of farewell. There was only the shape of a rider and his horse, fading into the high sky until it was gone.

Legend says the Hùng King had a temple raised for him in Phù Đổng village. On Mount Sóc, where the hero made his last stop, people from the surrounding area built him a temple too. The people never forgot him. And, as the legend has it, the land still holds traces of the story. The ivory bamboo of Gia Lâm is gold because the flames of the iron horse licked it. The ponds and lakes along the road from Gia Lâm up to Sóc Sơn are the prints of its iron hooves, pounded into the fields as it thundered past.

Saint Gióng is one of the Four Immortals of Vietnamese folk belief. They are four undying saints, worshiped by Vietnamese people for generations. In 2010, UNESCO inscribed the Gióng festival as a representative intangible cultural heritage of humanity. It is the festival of the Phù Đổng temple and the Sóc temple. The honor did not come because the story really happened. It came because the story has lived in Vietnamese hearts for thousands of years, told and retold from one generation to the next.

Late in the afternoon on the Gia Lâm plain, the wind blows through the ivory bamboo, its stems a shimmering gold. Far off, toward Sóc Sơn, stands the mountain where Gióng stopped for the last time. And high in the sky, as the last light of day flares up and fades, people still seem to see the faint shadow of a hero on horseback. Rising higher and higher, never coming back. For Gióng belongs to no single village. Gióng belongs to all Vietnamese people, and to the sky.