湘西的“落洞”：姑娘说山洞里有个神仙看上了她

In western Hunan there is a saying called “Luo Dong.”

It means that inside caves in the mountains live cave gods, who often take a fancy to young village girls. Girls who are favored are usually pretty, introverted, physically weak, easily shy, gradually lose their appetite, stop talking, turn pale in the face but flush on the cheeks, their eyes brighten, and talk in their dreams all day, saying a young man comes to find her, dressed very elegantly, speaking very sweetly. The family hires a shaman to perform rituals, but it does not work; the girl wastes away day by day and finally dies.

Villagers say she has “married the cave god,” also called “Luo Hua Dong Nü.” To locals, this is both an unfortunate thing and an honorable thing, showing the girl was chosen by a god, so people actually respect her a little.

Shen Congwen wrote about such girls in Xiangxi, saying these girls are mostly shy, prone to overthinking, delicate and beautiful in temperament, and often the prettiest ones. He believed this phenomenon was the result of a “spiritual romance”: in a closed place where marriage was not free, girls had no outlet, so they had to find someone in their imagination.

Later folklorists and psychiatric researchers also mostly believe this was probably hysteria, and that closed environments, oppressive marriage, malnutrition, and long-term physical weakness stacked together were then fitted by locals into the story of the cave god.

This was something from the past; now it is basically unheard of.

#Folklore #网络转载 #湘西