A long time ago, there once was a cowherd who lived with his older brother and sister-in-law in rural China. It was said that he had been reincarnated from the keeper of Heaven’s celestial flock, who had fallen in love with the Jade Emperor’s daughter, a young weaver, and was banished from Heaven because the laws forbade their romance.
One day, the weaver girl came down to earth to bathe in a riverbank, whereupon she was spotted by the lonely cowherd. He was amazed by her beauty and, while she was bathing, he stole her clothes. Without her heavenly robes, the weaver girl could not traverse the passages between Heaven and Earth. As a result, she was unable to return to Heaven, but she found herself enraptured by the cowherd, and soon after this meeting, they decided to be wed, and they spent many years of happy matrimony farming the fields, weaving at home, and raising their children.
However, their relationship was eventually discovered by the Jade Emperor, and he ordered the Queen Mother of the West to retrieve his errant daughter. The cowherd was distraught upon his wife’s kidnapping, and he and their children, with assistance from a magical bull, were able to climb to Heaven. However, the Queen Mother of the West took no pity on the cowherd and weaver girl and punished them by creating the River of Heaven, a silvery band that split the sky apart and separated the two lovers forever. Heartbroken, the cowherd and the weaver girl faded from their previous existences, turning into two bright stars in the skies above.
Seeing their suffering, the Queen Mother of the West finally relented and allowed them to see one another once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month. A flock of magpies sent by the Queen Mother would swarm the sky and create a living bridge across the milky river that separated them, allowing the two lovers to be happy and reunited once more. This reunion was identified in a triangle of stars that were most visible in the middle and late summer: the cowherd was the star we know as Altair, the weaver girl was the star Vega, and the bridge of magpies spanning the Milky Way was the star Deneb.
Stories, such as the one I’ve just shared and many others around the globe, were used to interpret the stars and celestial objects that people have seen sparkling in the night sky. The sky is our most expansive resource, and it is only natural that, since the beginning of human history, we would stare into the firmament above and discuss the patterns we saw and form tales that could develop from them. Many of these stories hold universal traits, identifiable no matter the origin of the tales; some are focused on dramatic love affairs, such as the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, some are animals in the sky used to tell cosmic-scale tales of hunters and their hunted, and some are a variety of shapes with predictable appearances, used to divine the future.
These stories are part of our shared human heritage, and there are always new stories to be told.
Music written and produced by Kenny Mihelich. Western Slope Skies is produced by the Black Canyon Astronomical Society and KVNF Community Radio. This feature was written and voiced by Kyle Johnson, Park Ranger at Curecanti National Recreation Area.
