The Legend of Lake Toba

The highlands of North Sumatra, in Indonesia, were not kind to the people who farmed them. Some seasons the harvest came and some seasons it failed, and the fields lay parched far more often than they grew green. Toba, a poor farmer who lived alone there, was more used to going hungry than to eating his fill. Every afternoon, as the shadows of the mountains stretched long across the river, he carried his fishing rod down to the water. He hoped to catch a few fish to trade for his evening meal.

This old tale is still told today by the Batak people around the highlands of North Sumatra. It begins on an afternoon like any other.

That afternoon, as the sunlight on the river turned the color of honey, his line suddenly jerked hard and dragged heavily down into the water. Toba pulled with both hands, sweat beading on his forehead, sure that this time he had hooked a really big fish. But as the fish broke the surface, he stood frozen on the bank. It was a fish of shining gold from head to tail, its scales glittering in the evening sun. He had never seen anything so beautiful. Before he could gather his wits, the fish spoke, in a trembling voice, just like a person. "Please do not eat me, please let me live," the fish begged. Toba was so startled that he dropped his rod. Then, without a moment of doubt, he worked the hook free and let the fish go back into the clear water.

Strangely, though, the moment the fish touched the water, it did not swim away. Right before his eyes, it turned into a beautiful young woman, standing tall on the sandy bank, her hair still wet from the river. She told him she had been a princess, turned into a fish by a spell. Now the kind heart of a poor farmer had set her free. To repay him, she offered to become his wife, on one single condition that had to be kept no matter what. However angry he might become, Toba must never, ever say that she, or the children still to come, had been born of fish. If that promise were ever broken, a terrible disaster that nothing could undo would fall upon them. Toba was overjoyed when he heard this, and he agreed at once without a second thought.

The two became husband and wife. Together they tended the small field by the river, and their days were warm and peaceful, rare in a land so harsh. Before long they had a son, and they named him Samosir. The boy shot up fast, strong in arm and leg, and his laughter rang across the yard. Those were the happiest days Toba had ever known. But Samosir was greedy for food. Whenever he was hungry he forgot everything else, and at times he could be rather thoughtless, seldom noticing the work other people put in.

One day around noon, the mother wrapped up a portion of rice, still steaming hot. She sent Samosir to carry it out to the field for his father, who had been bent over his hoe since early morning. On the way, the sun was fierce and the road was long, and the boy's empty stomach kept rumbling. At last he could hold out no longer. Samosir stopped under a tree, opened the bundle and tasted one mouthful, then another, until not a single grain of rice was left.

Out in the noon heat, Toba was worn out and aching with hunger, watching the distance for his son. When Samosir arrived holding nothing but the empty wrapping, Toba opened it and could not believe his eyes. The anger he had held in all morning flared up like a fire caught by the wind. He shouted at the boy. And in a moment when he lost control of himself, the forbidden words slipped out, the very words he had sworn never to say. "You are nothing but the child of a fish!"

The moment the words were out, Toba froze and clapped a hand over his mouth. He could hardly believe what he had just said. The promise of long ago, kept through so many years, had shattered in a single moment of anger, and there was no way to take it back. But it was already too late.

Hearing his father call him that, Samosir stood stunned, then burst into tears and ran all the way home to tell his mother everything. The mother stood very still in the middle of the yard. She knew that what she had quietly feared for all those years had finally come. She held her son tight and, her voice choked, told him to run as fast as he could to the highest hill nearby.

Samosir had barely set off running when, right beneath his mother's feet, the earth split open in a narrow crack. Water shot up out of it, higher than a person's head. The water roared like thunder deep under the ground and surged on across the terraced fields. It spilled over every thatched roof and swallowed the footpath that Toba had walked each afternoon, long ago, on his way to fish at the river. Little by little, the whole valley sank beneath clear blue-green water, so deep that no one could find the bottom.

The mother stood amid the water rising around her. Just before it closed over the place where she stood, she quietly turned back into the golden fish she had once been. She melted into that same water, returning to her true nature, without a single cry.

Samosir ran on and on, higher and higher, with the roar of the water behind him as if it meant to swallow his every step. But the hill he stood on was far taller than the hills around it. However high the water rose, the summit was still there, and the flood could not drown it.

The water kept rising until the whole valley of old had become a great lake, so wide that from one shore no one could see the other. People called it Lake Toba, after the father who used to sit fishing quietly by the little river. And the hill in the middle of the lake, where the boy had run and escaped, was called Samosir Island, carrying his name forever.

Today Lake Toba is a vast stretch of water among the mountains and forests of Sumatra. It is also the place where mother and son, though parted, stay together forever in the same water. The mother dissolves into every clear ripple. The son stands firm in the middle of the lake, an island that will never sink.

Around the lake, the Batak people still retell the old story to their children and grandchildren. It tells of a father who broke a promise and a mother who became a fish again. It tells of the boy of long ago, who now stands firm as a whole island in the middle of the water.

The wind still sweeps across the wide waters of Lake Toba, over the dark green island that floats on the clear lake. Once there was only a man here, a small river and a promise that had to be kept. That little river has grown, by now, into a boundless world of water and sky.