Mouse daughter wants to "get married"

China News Service, Jinan, February 9 th: Shandong New Year Folk Custom: The daughter of the mouse is getting married, and the wedding date is scheduled for Qixi.

Author yang,

"Li Li, Li Li, beating gongs and drums, blowing horns, hanging red happy characters on the wall, the mouse daughter is getting married, the wedding date is set for Qixi, the mouse daughter is married in a hurry, the red sedan chair carries the bride, and the group of mice are seeing her off." On the afternoon of the seventh day of the first month, I met a group of seven-and eight-year-old children in Xiaoyun Town, Jinxiang, Shandong Province, while singing children's songs about mice marrying women, in a secret place outside their own courtyard wall.

As a grain-producing area in northern China, Shandong's folk customs seem to be closely related to grain protection: for a long time, on the seventh day of the first month, Shandong people were busy "marrying a mouse girl", which gradually became one of the traditional folk customs with great influence in Shandong.

Zhou Peng, a villager in Xiaoyun Town, Jinxiang, Shandong Province, told me that in the rural customs of Jinxiang, Shandong Province, the seventh day of the first month is regarded as the day when "rats marry women", that is, the rats are sent out of the house, expressing the villagers' desire to eradicate rodents; That night, the villagers should have dinner early, and before it is dark, they will prepare a "gift" for the mouse to marry a daughter and set off firecrackers in advance to celebrate; When it is dark, every household in the village can't light a lamp, and the whole family sits in the house without saying a word, for fear of disturbing the mouse's marriage, hoping to get along well with the mouse in order to reduce the number of mice this year.

In northern China, although the legend of "a mouse marries a girl" is not recorded in ancient books, it is widely circulated among the people, and some expressions such as children's songs, prints and paper-cuts have been preserved and handed down. A long time ago, the mouse couple wanted to climb the most powerful relative through their daughter's marriage. I see, the sun is afraid of dark clouds, dark clouds are afraid of wind, and wind is afraid of walls. Finally, the wall said it was afraid of mice. Once down, the mouse thinks he is afraid of cats, and cats are the best. Looking at the Gregorian calendar, it shows that the seventh day of the seventh lunar month is an auspicious day, which is convenient for bragging. The bride married her daughter to a cat raised by a farmer with a sedan chair. As soon as the bride entered the cat's bridal chamber, she never came out again, and the mouse dared not enter the farmer's house, so there were no mice in the farmer's house. Since then, in order to get rid of mice, people have made it a custom that the seventh day of the first month is the day when mice marry women.

Wang Wenhui, director of Jinxiang Cultural Center, said that as a folk cultural phenomenon, Tujia, Korean and other ethnic minorities have similar behaviors in China, except Han. Although the story and time of mice marrying women are different, they all show people's good wishes for eliminating rodents and disasters.