Seventh Sister and the Serpent belongs to the rich oral tradition of the Yi people of southwest China. Living mostly in the mountainous regions of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou provinces, the Yi, one of China's minority nationalities, have long been sedentary agriculturists and stock raisers. Music, dance and traditional myths and legends have served the Yi people as means for expressing various aspects of their culture. Thus beyond its value as literature, the romantic saga Seventh Sister and the Serpent is a rich repository of Yi social life, customs and mores.

The narrative is set in a mythical world where the appearance of fantastic beings and personified animals is taken for granted. The story begins with a flood, which occurs in a distant era of the past. When the flood waters recede, Seventh Sister's parents are discovered in the upper branches of a tall tree. They descend from the tree and give birth to a son and seven daughters. The son of the Dragon King, Serpent Prince, begins an extended and eventually successful courtship of the youngest daughter, a process through which we are introduced in great detail to Yi social customs. Descriptive passages abound throughout the tale. The most detailed passages in the saga, those treating Seventh Sister's clothing and jewelry, are in themselves useful studies on female adornment in Yi society. These, however, must be appreciated only in a general way as Yi dress styles vary from group to group. The lavishness of the feast tables and the carefully noted inventories of gifts hint at the importance of wealth display and gift exchange in traditional Yi society.

The central plot is simple. After her marriage to Serpent Prince, Seventh Sister is murdered by her jealous eldest sister, returns to life as a thrush, and is killed again by her wicked sister. After her eldest sister dies, Seventh Sister resumes human form and regains her status as Serpent Prince's wife.

The saga serves as a vehicle for the promotion of important Yi values and warns of the consequences of not living up to them. Hard work, constancy in love, family unity and filial piety are strongly stressed- woe to those who defy the traditional code of behavior! The fate which befalls Eldest Sister is the most obvious example of a moral lesson. In the early part of the saga, she rejects the opportunity of marrying hard-working Serpent Prince in favor of marrying a marten. Later, she covets Seventh Sister and Serpent Prince's hard-won wealth and eventually murders Seventh Sister twice- first as a human being and second as a reincarnated thrush. Yet Eldest Sister receives her just reward when after stuffing herself with cabbage grown from the thrush's remains she drowns in the very well into which she first pushed her youngest sister. The lesson is clear- wealth can only be gained through hard work and self-reliance and implies certain responsibilities. When Seventh Sister and Serpent Prince return to her parents' home after several years of marriage (appropriately in the year of the Snake), they are both performing an act of filial piety and demonstrating that they are capable of making a way for themselves in the world.

The story of Seventh Sister and the Serpent seems much less fantastic than most myths until we consider that the main characters are a beautiful young girl and a serpent. Yet this motif is not uncommon among the peoples of southwestern China. It appears also in the folklore of the Zhuangs of Guangxi. The details in the story vary from group to group and nationality, reflecting local customs and tastes. In the several Yi versions of the tale, the number of sisters varies, events occur in different sequence, and different values are stressed within the conflict between good and evil. However, the motif of a young girl marrying a serpent and coming back to life as a bird after being killed is consistent. Unfortunately, it is difficult with our present knowledge to attribute the original creation of the tale to any particular nationality. Serpent Prince and Dragon King are stock figures in the mythologies of numerous areas in China.

The Yi language belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family. Besides their extensive oral tradition, the Yi also developed a simple writing system used to record historic and sacred texts. Most of these texts make use of a five-character line. The title of the saga, "Seventh Sister and the Serpent," is derived from the Yi "Saibomo," which means "a human being marries a serpent." The poem was originally sung in the narrative ah se (an Yi folk melody) style which, like the written texts, uses a five-character line. The poem was collected in Yunnan Province in the later 1950's by a team of researchers based in Kunming. The present translation follows a Chinese version of the text published in 1980.

Mark Bender

January 1982

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