The Magpie Bridge

Over the land of Korea, there were magpies in the sky every single day.

There were so many that nobody bothered to count them. The long-tailed black and white birds covered the rooftops and chattered along the fences. They swooped into the yards to peck at grain, then darted back up to the treetops. Children there grew up with that chatter, as used to it as to the sound of the wind. All year round, every day, the sky was full of birds.

Except for one day.

On the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the sky was empty. Not one bird on the roofs. Not one in the yards. Not one on the fences. The whole village fell strangely quiet, and the children kept tipping their heads back to stare at the empty sky above them.

They wanted to know where all the birds had gone.

This was just the moment when Korean mothers of old would sit down, pull a child onto their lap, and begin the story.

Before they begin, one thing should be made clear. This tale does not belong to Korea alone. A whole wide stretch of East Asia tells it, each place in its own way. In Vietnam it is so familiar that almost everyone knows it by heart. It is the tale of Ngưu Lang and Chức Nữ. It belongs to the night of Thất Tịch, on the seventh of the seventh month, and to the steady drizzle of late summer that the Vietnamese call mưa ngâu. Chức Nữ means the weaving girl. Ngưu Lang means the young cowherd. In the Korean telling, too, the two are a weaver and a prince who owns a herd of cattle. The same two people, the same night. Only the telling is different, and the difference lies in the birds.

The Korean tale says that once upon a time, in the Kingdom of the Stars, there lived a king and a princess.

The princess was the finest weaver in all the heavens. Every task she took on in the palace turned out well. She was gentle and hardworking too, so her father loved her above all else. Whatever she asked, he could hardly refuse.

Then one day a prince from the star lands came to her father's court. He was young and handsome, and the moment he saw her, he fell in love. Both families gave their blessing. The wedding was a grand one.

In her husband's house, she kept her old ways. She saw to the meals and the clothes, and even to the joys and sorrows of the servants in the household. Everyone who looked on said the prince was a lucky man.

The prince, though, could not keep to good ways.

He grew lazy. His work he simply left undone. The family's wealth dwindled, and then his wife's dowry dwindled with it. He sold off the whole herd of cattle, even the little calves. The money vanished, so he had to borrow, borrowing from one place to cover another, until there was not a single coin left in the house.

Up above, the king her father looked down and saw it all. What angered him most was the cattle. He threatened to strip the prince of his rank and send him far away. But the princess went to her father and begged one more chance for her husband. And the king, as always, softened before his daughter. He paid off all his son-in-law's debts and gave him another chance.

The prince could not hold on to that chance either.

This time the king's mind was made up. He banished the prince to the far northern edge of the sky, north of the Star River. It was so far away that it took six long months of walking to get there. He sent his own daughter to the southern edge of the sky, exactly as far. Between them lay a vast, wide river. It was the Milky Way, the band of light that stretches across the sky on summer nights.

But that king did not have a heart of iron. Even as he gave the order, he left a way open. One night every year, on the night of the seventh day of the seventh month, the two would be allowed to meet for a few hours.

The two set off, each in a different direction. And here the tale has a detail that is hard to forget once heard. The moment they reached their places of exile, both of them turned straight around and walked back. They did not rest a single day. They walked for six more months.

Exactly on the seventh day of the seventh month, the two arrived on opposite banks of the Star River.

And there they stood.

That was all. They could see each other, wave to each other, and call across a river so wide that their voices faded halfway over. Six months on foot, only to stand gazing at each other across a gap that no one could step over.

The two of them wept.

But the tears of heavenly beings are not like the tears of ordinary people. Their tears made the Star River rise, spill over its banks, and pour down onto the earth below. Houses flooded. Fields and gardens flooded. People and animals down on earth could not run fast enough.

So all the creatures of the world had to gather together.

The four-legged animals came. The creatures of the water rose to the surface. The winged ones flew in. They talked it over back and forth, and in the end everyone had to agree on one thing. Only birds could manage this task, and only birds with strong wings that could fly very high.

And the whole council turned to look at the magpies.

The magpies agreed. Word spread across the world, from the seashore to the deep forest, and birds flocked in from everywhere. There were millions of them, blackening a whole stretch of sky. The oldest and most seasoned birds took charge.

This is how they did it. First, they pressed their heads together, so tightly that not a single gap was left. The deck of the bridge appeared, shining white like paving stone. Then they spread their wings, wing hooked into wing, and pulled them taut into two hanging cables that held up the whole span.

A bridge made of birds, reaching from one bank of the Star River to the other.

The prince stepped onto the bridge. Behind him came his whole retinue, with carts piled high with baggage. The whole procession walked across on the heads of the birds to the far bank, where the princess was already waiting. That night the two held a feast, sat side by side, and said many tender words to each other.

From then on, it was the same every year.

In the land of the magpies there is a law, and the law is just one sentence long. On the seventh day of the seventh month, no bird may be absent.

Now, in that land on that very day, people have three ways of knowing what is happening up above.

If rain falls in the morning, those are the happy tears of the two as they meet again.

If rain falls again as the afternoon wears on, those are their tears of parting.

And if thunder rumbles at the edge of the sky, that is the sound of the baggage carts rolling away. One heads north and one heads south, as each of the two goes back to their own place for another year.

Then, toward evening, the birds come home.

Once again they cover the rooftops and chatter along the fences. They swoop into the yards to peck at grain, as on any other day. The sky is full of birds again, just like every other day of the year.

Only one thing has changed.

If a child takes the trouble to look very closely at a magpie perched nearby, the child will see something. On top of the bird's head, a patch of feathers has worn away.

The Koreans of old said these were the footprints of the whole procession that had just crossed over. Others tell it differently. They say the feathers wore off because the birds spent that whole day carrying the materials for the bridge on their heads. Whichever way it is told, the bare patch stays right there on top of a small bird's head, once every year, exactly once.