Anonymous (9th century?)
His wife then composed a poem with the names of medicines its theme and, by means of it, asked him a series of questions:
“I, Belladonna, am the wife of a man named Wahoo,
Who early became a mandrake in Liang.
Before our matrimonyvine could be consomméted, he had to go back,
Leaving me, his wife, to dwell here ruefully alone.
5 The mustard has not been cut, the flaxseed bed remains unvisited—
Hemlocked in here without any neighbors, I raised my head and sighed for my Traveler’s Joy:
‘Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme—
I pray that he’ll forget me not!’
Gingerly, I hoped, but I recently heard that the King of Ch’u,
10 Acting without principle and unleashing a bitterroot heart,
Slaughtered my pawpaw and brother-in-law with a jalap! jalap! Clovered with shame, weak as a wisp of straw,
And arrowhead-swift, my husband fled with fear as a dog would.
Quick as a periwinkle, he became a fungative,
15 And hid amongst the stinkbushes;
But hiding became a hell-of-a-bore.
He seemed like a jackal pursued by horehounds;
Laudanum almighty, how he hopsed and hyssopped like a jack-in-the-pulpit!
When I think of it, bittersweet tears stain my bleedingheart;
20 I am arti-choked with antimony.
At nightshade when I sleep, it’s hard to endure till the morning’s glory;
I recite his name all day until my tongue curls up like a sliver of cypress.
His voice, begging balm, so ingenuous entered my ears;
Drawn by aniseedent causes, I dillied up to the visitor,
25 And, seeing it was my long orrised honeysuckle whom I mint at the gate,
Sloed down my steps to a hibiscus pace.
And then I saw your toothwort smile;
It reminded me of my husband’s dog’s tooth violets.
Borax you don’t remember me but, no madder what caper you’re up to,
30 I’m willing to lay out my scurvy Butter and Eggs.”
Tzu-hsü answered in the same cryptic vein:
“Potash! Nitre am I this fellow Wahoo whom you speak of,
Nor am I a fungative from injustice.
Listen while I tell you the currant of my travels.
I was born in Castoria and grew up in Betony Wood;
5 My father was a Scorpio, my mother a true Lily-of-the-valley.
Gathering up all of my goldenrod and silverweed,
This son of theirs became a Robin-Run-Around.
Rose Hips was my low-class companion,
Nelson Rockyfeldspar my uppercrust chum.
10 Together with them, I waded Wild Ginger Creek,
And caught cold in its squilling, wintergreen waters;
Saffronly, of the three of us, I found myself alone.
Day after day, my lotus-thread hopes dangled tenuously;
My thoughts were willows waving in the wind.
15 All alone, I climbed Witch Hazel Mountain;
How hard it was to cross the slippery elms and stone roots!
Cliffs towering above me, I clambered over stoneworts and rockweeds;
Often did I encounter wolfsbanes and tiger thistles.
Sometimes I would be thinking of soft spring beauties,
20 But suddenly would meet up with a bunch of pigsheads;
My thoughts would linger over midsummer vetches,
Yet I could never see an end to my tormentils.
So I reversed my steps, feeling compelled to spurry back;
Fennelly, I arrived here.
25 I grow goatsbeard,
Not dog’s tooth violets.
Methinks you’ve scratched a fenugreek but found no tartar,
So furze tell me what you mean and don’t make such a rhubarb.”
Translated by Victor H. Mair
This tour de force of punning is taken from the Tun-huang (see selection 214) story of Wu Tzu-hsü. The hero was a fugitive from his home state of Ch’u to the state of Wu (Ngwa) during the latter part of the sixth century B.C.E. The king of Ch’u executed his father and brother because they had remonstrated with him over his disreputable conduct. On his flight, Wu Tzu-hsü happens to stop where his wife was living at the time. We should note that Wu Tzu-hsü has been separated from her for a long time because of his official duties. Although he is in need of food and shelter, as soon as Wu realizes that it is his wife’s house that he has come to, he wishes to hurry on without being recognized by her, for fear that any knowledge of his identity might lead to apprehension by the authorities. Wu, however, has prominent front teeth, and his wife is more than suspicious about who this visitor really is.
Each line of the poem bears at least one pun on the name of a medicine, most of which are herbs. During the Sung period, there was a category of storytelling which consisted entirely of such puns. The present text is the earliest and most elaborate example known of this genre. All of the medicines mentioned in these lines are identified in Victor H. Mair, Tun-huang Popular Narratives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 275-279.
The Tun-huang story of Wu Tzu-hsü was probably originally composed around the first quarter of the eighth century, but the actual copy that has been miraculously preserved for us dates from the late ninth or early tenth century.