中文

The Amis

Fairy Tale: The Glowing Girl

The Amis of Hualien view Taibalang as the place of their origin. Every time a new child is born, The elders will tell a very charming story known as:

The Glowing Girl 

There once was a couple who had six children.
The youngest was a pretty girl named Taimujen.
From when she was little she was smart and adorable,
And everybody loved her.
She had a particularly nice singing voice,
And whenever she chanted work songs along with her parents and siblings,
Even the brook and the wind would stop to listen to her singing.

And there was something else that was special about Taimujen,
Something she couldn’t have kept a secret even if she’d wanted to:
She was glowing with a strange light that emanated from her whole body.
The others never had a hard time finding her,
Be it in broad daylight or the deep dark night.
Wherever she went,
She was always wrapped in a mantle of golden light.

Caroywasan was the son of the Sea God,
And he had a pair of very keen eyes.
One day, he caught a glimpse of Taimujen as she was scooping water from the ocean,
And he took her to be a beautiful fairy.
From that moment on she was always on his mind,
And all his thought was bent on how he might make her his wife.

Taimujen’s mother carefully hid her in a closet made of very thick boards,
But Taimujen’s radiance still escaped through the thick planks.
It glimmered in the grass growing on the ground,
The grains stored in the barn,
And even in the mud on the road.

So it came that Taimujen couldn’t escape the sharp eyes of Caroywasan.
After five days of hide and seek, the seawaters swelled
And the tide washed all over the shore and reached the village.
Caroywasan was determined on taking Taimujen home as his bride.

The seawaters continued to rise until they had devoured the entire coastline.
Then Taimujen and her brothers and sisters had no choice but to flee for their lives.
Together, they crawled into large wooden mortars,
And soon they were bobbing up and down on the wide ocean,
Struggling to stay alive.
Eventually they came to a mountain, and by its side they established a new home.

But they couldn’t forget their terrible experience,
And so they lived in constant sadness and worry.
All of their offspring were of a strange appearance, not looking human at all.
They would all cry so loudly and heartrendingly
That even the Spirits in the Heavens heard them
And sent down their angels to comfort and bless them.

Thus they were healed from their sadness and worry,
And their lives were no longer dark.
Finally, they gave birth to children of a human shape.
In fact, three beautiful girls were born in a row.
The oldest had very fair skin and sparkling eyes, and she was called Jeekohan Jeelau.
The second was clever and nimble, and very kind and understanding of others.
Her name was Padahan Jeelau.
The youngest was of slender and graceful figure,
and it was a delight to watch her dance. She was named Damatsan Jeelau.
Then, a little boy was also born, and his name was Dadahanuo Jeelau.

The boy grew to be big and strong,
And soon he would climb the mountains and swim in the ocean
With great skill and ease.
One day, as he was hunting,
He came upon a country with green trees and verdant plains.
He told his three sisters about what he had seen,
And the sisters decided to move to this place and build a new home there.
They had many children,
and their descendants grew and grew in number.
And there were always some who would keep looking for new places
To establish new settlements.
But they never forgot the place where their ancestors had first lived
Many generations ago.
You have all heard of that place: it is Taibalang.

The three sisters in this story are the founders of the Taibalang Amis tribe. The fact that the first ancestors are all women reflects the matrilineal nature of Amis society.

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