Published On

2017-10-30

Page Range

pp. 233-244

Print Length

11 pages

5. The Song of the Calf

Chapter of: Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet: Texts in Mongghul, Chinese, and English (pp. 233–244)

The Calf’s Song, meanwhile, tells the story of a calf and her mother. The two animals live as domestic livestock in a valley, and the calf dreams of escaping to freedom in the mountains. The mother discourages the calf, but she nonetheless escapes to the mountains, where she is surrounded by wolves. The mother appears to rescue the calf, who flees and, returning one week later, finds her mother’s remains. She then meditates on death, impermanence, and filial piety before returning to the valley to continue her life there.

Contributors

Li Dechun

(author)

Li Dechun (李得春, Limusishiden) is a native Mongghul from Huzhu Tu (Mongghul) Nationality Autonomous County. He currently works in Qinghai University Affiliated Hospital, Qinghai Province, as a chief surgeon. He has been researching and writing about Mongghul traditional culture since 1989.

Gerald Roche

(author)
Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow at University of Melbourne
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2410-351X

Gerald Roche is currently a Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow at the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute. He is an anthropologist, and researches linguistic and cultural diversity in Tibet. Gerald's publications include Introduction: The Transformation of Tibet's Language Ecology in the Twenty-first Century. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 245 (2017): 1–35. The Mangghuer Nadun: Village Ritual and Frontier History on the Northeast Tibetan Plateau, in The Silk Road: Interwoven History, Vol. 1: Long-distance Trade, Culture, and Society, ed. by M. N. Walter and J. P. Ito-Adler (Cambridge: Cambridge Institutes Press, 2015), pp. 310–47.