The cowherd and the weaver girl, lovers parted by the Milky Way

On summer nights two bright stars face each other on either side of the Milky Way: Vega, in the constellation Lyra, and Altair, in Aquila. In China they were seen for centuries as two lovers, the celestial weaver girl and the young cowherd, condemned to live apart, separated by a river of light. Their legend is one of the best loved in East Asia.

The stars in ancient texts

The two figures already appear in the Classic of Poetry, the oldest collection of Chinese verse, in a poem where the celestial Weaver and Herd-boy are named as stars that do not weave and draw no cart. Later, among the Nineteen Old Poems of the Han period, a lyric describes the weaver weeping at her loom, separated from her beloved by a clear and shallow river.

The story grew richer over the centuries and acquired many local variants. In the most widespread form, Zhinü is a daughter or granddaughter of the heavenly ruler and weaves the clouds and colours of the sky. Niulang, by contrast, is a poor cowherd on earth, an orphan mistreated by his elder brother, who owns nothing but an old ox.

The wedding and the separation

The ox, which in many versions is a celestial being fallen from grace, advises the young man to hide the weaver's clothes while she bathes in a lake with her sisters. Without her clothes Zhinü cannot return to the sky, and the two marry. They live happily and have two children, while the heavenly loom stands abandoned.

When the news reaches heaven, the weaver is taken back by force among the gods. Niulang, wrapped in the hide of the dead ox, pursues her with the children. Then the Queen Mother of the West draws with her hairpin a river across the sky, the Silver River, that is the Milky Way, which separates the couple for ever.

The bridge of magpies

Moved by their grief, the gods allowed the lovers to meet once a year, on the seventh night of the seventh lunar month. On that night, the legend says, flocks of magpies gather and form a bridge with their wings over the celestial river, on which the cowherd and the weaver meet again. If it rains, it is said to be their tears.

From this comes the Qixi festival, the night of sevens. In traditional China it was above all a women's festival: girls set out offerings and asked the weaver to grant them skill in sewing and embroidery. Today it is often called the Chinese Valentine's Day and has become a festival for lovers.

In Japan and Korea

The legend soon spread to neighbouring countries. In Japan the festival took the name Tanabata, and it is customary to write wishes on strips of coloured paper and hang them on bamboo branches. In Korea it is known as Chilseok, and there too people tell of the bridge formed by birds. Even today in many Japanese cities, such as Sendai, the festival is celebrated with great paper decorations hung along the streets.

The story of the cowherd and the weaver joins astronomy, daily work and feeling. Every summer, looking up at the sky, anyone can see the two stars on either side of the luminous trail and remember a love that distance did not extinguish but made, if anything, even more faithful. It is also an example of how the night sky has been read, in every civilisation, as a great book of stories.