The Legend of Ba Be Lake

Out on the wide waters of Ba Bể Lake lies a small, quiet island, green with trees. All around it, clear water mirrors the mountains. Seen from a boat, it looks perfectly peaceful, just a patch of land floating in the middle of the lake. But the people who live around the lake know that the island did not simply appear. Behind it lies an old story, a story about kindness. Grandparents in this region still tell it to their grandchildren whenever evening settles over the water.

This is a folktale. The story gives no date. It has only a strange old woman, a poor mother and her child, and a whole expanse of water born in a single night.

The story goes that long ago, in the Nam Mẫu area, now part of Thái Nguyên province, there was no lake at all. There were only thriving villages and flat fields, where people worked and lived in peace. One year, the people of the area held a great festival of offerings to the Buddha. They called it the Vô Già festival. From every village across the uplands, young and old, men and women, came flocking to gather there. Laughter and chatter filled the air. The fragrance of incense mingled in the breeze with cooking smoke and the smell of freshly steamed sticky rice. Everyone was eager and light of heart in those happy festival days.

While the whole region was celebrating, an old beggar woman appeared from nowhere. She was very old and bent, her clothes were in rags, and her body was covered in sores. She was dirty, and she smelled bad. Leaning on a stick, she went from one festival gathering to the next, holding out her hand for a bite to eat. But everyone who saw her grimaced and backed away. Some waved her off, and others spoke harshly to her. They were afraid she carried disease, and afraid she would soil the festival trays of food. A whole region was holding a festival for the Buddha, and yet not one person would share a bowl of rice with the old woman.

Slowly the sky grew dark. The old woman still trudged along alone, hungry and footsore, looking for a roof for the night. But at every door she knocked on, she was turned away.

At last she came to a small, poor house at the far end of the village. It belonged to a widowed mother who was raising her child alone and had nothing to spare. The mother saw the old woman trembling outside the door in the dark, and she could not bring herself to look away. She invited the old woman in, set out the little rice that was left, and urged her to eat and warm herself. After the meal, the mother spread a sleeping place in a corner of the house and gave it to her guest for the night. Mother and child were not rich at all, but whatever kindness they had, they gave in full.

Late in the night, when everything was still, mother and child woke with a start. A strange light filled the house. They looked over at the place where the old woman lay, and they froze. There was no beggar woman there anymore. In her place lay a great water dragon, its body coiled and glowing brightly, its head resting on the roof beam. Mother and child were terrified. Yet they closed their eyes again and lay still, their hearts still full of quiet pity for their strange guest.

In the morning, the old woman took back her old form. Before saying goodbye, she looked at mother and child with kind eyes and told them the truth. She was no ordinary person. She had come to see who, among all the people at the festival for the Buddha, truly carried the heart of the Buddha within them. Then she leaned close and whispered a warning. A very great flood was coming soon. She handed them a packet of ashes and told them to scatter it around the house that very night, so the water could not come in. Next she took a grain of rice from her clothes, still in its husk, and bit the husk in two. She gave mother and child the two halves and told them to keep them very safe. When the water rose, they were to drop the husks into it, and the husks would serve them well. With that, the old woman vanished and was seen no more.

Mother and child did as they were told. They scattered the ashes around the house, then carefully put away the two tiny pieces of husk.

That evening, while the villagers were still gathered at their offerings, the ground began to tremble softly. Then water came welling up from deep in the earth, stronger and stronger. In a short while, the water had spread far and wide across the whole region. The villages and the fields, and the houses that had shut their doors on the old woman, all slowly disappeared beneath the water.

Yet, strangely, the small house of the widow and her child stayed safe. The ring of ashes the old woman had told them to scatter kept the floor of the house high. However far the water rose, the floor of the house seemed to rise with it, standing firm amid a sea of water.

Remembering the old woman's words, mother and child quickly took out the two pieces of husk and dropped them into the water. As soon as they touched the surface, the tiny husks turned into two boats. So mother and child climbed aboard and rowed with all their strength across the wide water. They rowed to wherever people were struggling, pulled them into the boats one by one, then rowed off to find others. All through that night, the poorest mother and child in the village saved more people than anyone else. By now, their kindness had become two boats full of love.

When the water grew calm and daylight returned, the whole region had changed. Where the villages once stood there was now a vast lake. Its water was clear and green as jade, mirroring the clouds and the ranges of stone mountains all around. The lake divided into three connected arms. The people here have their own names for them, in the Tày language. The first two are Pé Lầm and Pé Lù. The third is Pé Lèng. In Vietnamese, ba means three. Three arms, three stretches of water joined as one, and that is how the name Ba Bể was born.

In the middle of the new lake, a small island rose up. People say it was the floor of the widow's house. The water could not swallow it, because the kind heart of its owner protected it. Later generations named the island Gò Bà Góa, the Widow's Mound. In some places it is called đảo Bà Góa, the Widow's Island. Both names keep alive the memory of the poor mother and her kindness that night. There is one more island in the lake, called An Mã Island, quietly gazing at its own reflection in the blue-green water.

Today, anyone who drifts by boat along the three arms, Pé Lầm, Pé Lù and Pé Lèng, and gazes at the small island resting quietly on the clear water, will understand why the grandparents here keep telling this story. The island lies still under the evening sky, deep green and calm. And the wide lake around it quietly keeps the story of a poor home that opened its door to a stranger one night long ago. It keeps that story every evening, to this very day.