During the Ming dynasty, a plague of locusts visited Qingyan, and was advancing rapidly towards the Yi River district, when the magistrate of that place, in great tribulation at the impending disaster, retired one day to sleep behind the screen in his office.

There he dreamt that a young graduate, named Willow, wearing a tall hat and a green robe, and of very commanding stature, came to see him, and declared that he could tell the magistrate how to get rid of the locusts.

"Tomorrow," said Willow, "on the south-west road, you will see a woman riding on a large jennet; she is the Spirit of the Locusts. Ask her and she will help you."

The magistrate thought this strange advice; however, he got everything ready, and waited, as he had been told, at the roadside. By-and-by, along came a woman with her hair tied up in a knot and a serge cape over her shoulders, riding slowly northwards on an old mule; whereupon the magistrate burned some sticks of incense, and, seizing the mule's bridle, humbly presented a goblet of wine.

The woman asked him what he wanted; to which he replied, "Lady, I implore you to save my small magistracy from the dreadful ravages of your locusts."

"Oho!" said the woman, "that scoundrel Willow has been letting the cat out the bag, has he? He shall suffer for it; but I won't touch your crops."

She then drank three cups of wine, and vanished out of sight. Subsequently, when the locusts did come, they flew high in the air, and did not settle on the crops, but they stripped the leaves off every willow-tree, far and wide; and then the magistrate awoke to the fact that the graduate in his dream was the Spirit of the Willows.

Some said that this happy result was owing to the magistrate's care for the welfare of his people.

SOURCE: Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio, by Pu Songling (c.1679); Herbert Giles translation (1908; Tuttle reprint 2010). Tale #119, p. 362.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Pu Songling doesn't specify the date, but only one locust plague hit eastern China hard enough to be listed in Wikipedia's timeline for the Ming Dynasty: December 1641, when Pu was a baby.

--Chris Wayan

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