The Legend of Lak Lake

The red ember sank into the water.

This time, it did not go out.

A legend of the M'Nông people says that the water suddenly caught fire. A red glow ran across its surface, spreading from a little gully to the stream, then from the stream all the way to the headwaters. That strange sight begins a story about a clay pot, a buffalo's hoofprint, and a wide lake that later took the name Lắk Lake.

The M'Nông who live around the lake have passed this story down for many generations. In their telling, there were two brothers named Lách and Liêng. They went about with a friend called Y Biêng.

That day, the three of them drove their buffalo into the forest. They rubbed rattan and dry bamboo together to make fire. On the way back, they searched and searched before they found one very small ember still left.

That little ember started a contest. They wanted to see who could dip it into water and keep the fire from going out.

Three tries came one after another.

Y Biêng went first. The ember went out the moment it touched the water.

Lách went next. His ember went out too.

Then Liêng took his turn. The little ember was lowered into the water. But instead of cooling, it stayed red, and then flames leaped up on the water.

The three friends hurried to put it out. They threw sand and gravel over it. The fire did not stop. They heaped up leaves from the trees and the bamboo to block it. The fire kept spreading. They used earth, and then mud. In the quickening rhythm of the old tale, nothing they laid down could hold back that strange fire.

The water in the gully dried up. The water in the river dried up. The water at the headwaters was gone as well. With no water to cook rice or porridge, the people of the village carried blankets and mats outside at night to catch the dew. Every bit of moisture that gathered was carefully kept. By day, everyone climbed the mountains and went into the forest, looking for water still held inside the stems of bamboo.

After that, Lách and Liêng were living out in their upland field. The two brothers had to search for water too. They took a dog along, then climbed high mountains and went into the deep forest.

They cut bamboo of several kinds in place after place, but found no water. Their legs grew tired. The hands that held their knives grew tired too. Every stem that might hold water seemed to have been found by someone else first.

Just then, the dog stopped beside an old bamboo and barked and barked.

Lách and Liêng looked at the bamboo. The brothers chopped at it with all their strength. When the stem fell, there really was water inside. After a long search, they had found the very thing the whole village lacked.

The brothers took the water and went back.

The next day, Lách and Liêng went farther. People had already cut the bamboo nearby, so the brothers crossed one mountain and then another, until they came upon a bamboo no one had cut.

The blade came down. The stem split open.

There was water inside. Along with the water there was an eel, and a gourami fish as well.

The brothers carried the whole bamboo tube back to their field. They used the water to cook rice, then put the eel and the gourami into a clay pot. After talking it over, they decided not to eat the two creatures. They would keep them and raise them instead.

Day after day, the eel grew. The gourami grew too. The clay pot had once been roomy enough, but little by little it became cramped. The two creatures spoke up. They said they no longer had enough room, and they needed a bigger place to live.

Lách and Liêng set off at once to look for one.

The brothers found a great puddle in the hoofprint of a bull buffalo. They poured the water from the bamboo tube into it, then let the eel and the gourami go. They drove stakes into the ground all around it, to guard the new home of the two creatures.

But the hoofprint did not stay roomy for long.

The eel and the gourami grew bigger every day. They dug and burrowed, making their home wider. However far the hollow spread, more water came to fill it. The little puddle grew deeper, its edge drew back, and the surface of the water opened out day by day.

From then on, Lách and Liêng had water to cook rice and porridge without walking far. The people of the village still did not know where this new water was, because the two brothers were out in their field.

Then a very small sign gave away something very big.

The brothers' dog wandered about carrying a piece of scorched rice, the crust from the bottom of a pot. The villagers saw it, and they knew at once there had to be water somewhere. Without water, no one could have cooked the rice that left that crust behind.

Everyone began to search. They went to the right, and then to the left, but still found nothing. One old woman saw the dog and quietly followed it. Wherever the dog went, she followed. At last she found Lách and Liêng beside the water.

The old woman asked for a little water.

The brothers gave her enough to cook rice and porridge. When she returned to the village, people asked where the water had come from. She pointed toward the field of Lách and Liêng.

From then on, the villagers came looking. The water was no longer something only one household knew about. And the pool of the eel and the gourami kept on growing wider.

The clay pot had once been too small.

Then the hoofprint became too small as well.

In the end, as the M'Nông tell it, that water became a wide lake. People called it Lắk Lake.

In the legend, the lake opened out from a bamboo tube with water inside, from an eel and a gourami, and from a buffalo's hoofprint in the earth. The water kept spreading, until the little shore of long ago drew far away. It left a vast expanse of blue among the mountains and forests.