The Legend of Ba Om Pond

On a quiet morning, in a Khmer hamlet in southern Vietnam, a procession walks down the lane. At its head are the parents of a young man. Behind them come his relatives, carrying trays of offerings. They are on their way to a young woman's house to ask for her hand in marriage. Her family waits at home, the seats already arranged and the tea already set out.

It is always this way. The side that sets out to ask is the groom's side.

The Khmer of southern Vietnam have a story of their own to explain why. And that story begins with a pond that was dug in a single night.

This is an old tale of the Khmer around Trà Vinh, in the Mekong Delta. Grandparents tell it to their grandchildren on the porch. It is not an event with a date to look up in the history books. People tell it to remember a name, and to remember a night.

The story goes that long ago, that land was very dry. Every year, once the rains were over, there came long months without a single drop of fresh water from the sky. The rice fields cracked into squares that crunched underfoot. The grass turned yellow. The mango leaves shriveled. A child who wanted a dipper of cool water to wash his face had to walk a long way. He carried it home a little at a time, walking very slowly so the water would not spill.

So one day, the people of the region gathered in the shade of a tree to discuss something important. They had to dig a pond. A pond so wide and so deep that the rainy season's water would collect there, and everyone could draw from it all through the dry months.

Everyone agreed. But once the pond was settled, someone remembered an old quarrel in the region that no one had ever won. Whenever there was a wedding in the village, which side had to take the first step and go to ask? The men said the women's side should go. The women said the men's side should go. The two sides argued on and on, year after year, and never settled it.

Then someone had an idea that set the whole gathering under the tree buzzing. Why not join the two matters into one? They would split into two sides, the men on one and the women on the other. Each side would dig its own pond. The side whose pond was wider and deeper, and finished first, would win. From then on, the losing side would be the one to go and ask for the marriage, and it would provide the wedding gifts as well.

Both sides clapped their hands. The contest was set. Anyone who heard those terms could guess how long that night would be.

That night, under the stars, the two sides divided two plots of land between them. The men took the western plot. They marked a huge circle on the ground and began to dig. The women took the eastern plot and marked a neat square with four even corners. At the head of the women was a woman named Om, whom the story calls Bà Om. She walked from one end of the bank to the other and split her people into teams. One team loosened the earth, another carried it away, and a third built up the banks, so no one got in anyone else's way.

The men trusted in their strength. They were strong, and everyone knew they were strong. Their hoes bit into the earth, deep and solid. So they dug for a while, then rested for a while, chatting, drinking water, and laughing loudly across the plot. It is still early, they told one another. Until the morning star rises, the night is still long.

The women did not laugh. They just kept digging, steadily, neither fast nor slow, like people pounding rice. The earth came up from the bottom of the pond and became its banks. The banks grew higher. The bed of the pond sank lower, cool and fragrant with the smell of wet soil.

Around midnight, Bà Om stood on the bank and looked down at her side's pond. It was nearly done. Only a little stretch was left. But she looked west and saw that the other pond was deep as well. She knew that if the men stayed awake and dug the whole night through, their strength would still win out.

So she sent a few people to cut a bamboo pole. It was no ordinary bamboo, but one so long that it took two people to raise it. She hung a lamp from its tip. Then she had the pole planted in the ground to the east, in the most open spot, where it could be seen most clearly from the other side.

Slowly the lamp rose higher. It climbed above the treetops, above the roofs, until it hung alone against the deep black eastern sky, bright and still, without a flicker.

At the foot of the pole, the two people who had just raised it stepped back into the darkness, sat down and kept quiet. From the western plot, no one could see them. Only that point of light.

The men were resting. One of them happened to look east, then sprang to his feet and pointed. Look, the morning star. The morning star has risen. All the men followed his finger. Every one of them saw a large star hanging low on the eastern horizon. It was exactly where the morning star always rose, with exactly the warm yellow light the morning star always had.

So the night was over. Time was up. A few wanted to dig a little more, but most had already stretched out on the earthen bank with a long sigh. That was it for tonight. They would see about the rest in the morning. They slept with their heads on their hoe handles, slept soundly, sure that they had done enough.

On the eastern side, no one slept. The hoes kept going into the earth, steady and softer now, so the sound would not carry across. The banks of the square pond were patted straight, and its four corners were trimmed square. Then another star rose in the sky. It was a real star, higher than the lamp, and it shone silver rather than yellow. By then the women's pond was finished. Completely finished. Night water seeped from the ground and gathered in a small pool at the bottom, enough to mirror a whole patch of sky.

The men woke up in the mist. They looked down into their pond. A rim of earth had not been dug yet, and the bottom was still uneven. Then they looked east and saw a wide square pond with straight banks and a deep bed. Above it stood a long bamboo pole, leaning a little, with a lamp at its tip. The lamp had gone out, and a thin thread of smoke still lingered.

They understood. And they accepted it.

The story says the men were not angry. They just stood patting one another on the shoulder and burst out laughing. It was the laugh of men who have just realized how cleverly they were outwitted. A loss is a loss. From then on, the men's side would be the one to go and ask. As for the square pond, the region agreed to name it after the woman who had thought of the lamp. They called it Ao Bà Om, the pond of Bà Om.

And from that time on, the Khmer of southern Vietnam have kept that custom. The young man goes to ask for the young woman. The groom's family prepares gifts and goes to the bride's home to make the proposal. The tale adds that children were born bearing their mother's family name, and that only much later, under French rule, did they switch to their father's. But the custom of going to ask is still alive. It still takes place at weddings today, in houses with red tile roofs beneath rows of thốt nốt trees. Thốt nốt is the palmyra palm, a tall fan palm.

In Trà Vinh, people still point out the square pond that bears Bà Om's name, and say it is the very pond from that night. From its bank, the view runs east, toward where the lamp was once raised. The sky there is still as open as it was long ago, and the morning star still rises in that same place.