A certain man, who had bought a fine cow, dreamt the same night that wings grew out of the animal's back, and that it had flown away. Regarding this as an omen of some pending misfortune, he led the cow off to market again, and sold it at a ruinous loss.

Trapping up in a cloth the silver he received, he slung it over his back, and was halfway home, when he saw a falcon eating part of a hare. Approaching the bird, he found it was quite tame, and accordingly tied it by the leg to one of the corners of the cloth in which his money was. The falcon fluttered about a good deal, trying to escape; and, by-and-by, the man's hold being for a moment relaxed, away flew the bird, cloth, money, and all.

"It was destiny," said the man every time he told the story; ignorant as he was, first, that no faith should be put in dreams; and, secondly, that people shouldn't take things they see by the wayside.

Quadrupeds don't usually fly.

--Pu Songling

EDITOR'S NOTE

This is a fine folktale of a warning dream in which the effort to avoid trouble causes it. Sally Rhine Feather, in her 2005 book The Gift, studied over 400 warning dreams and visions that seemed preventable. In two-thirds of these, the dreamers didn't act; like Pu Songling, they "put no faith in dreams". But a third did, and in two-thirds of those cases, or about 100, such action succeeded in mitigating or entirely avoiding the predicted hazard. So much for destiny!

Among the dozens of failures, she found only one case like the Flying Cow, where action caused what the dreamer sought to avoid. Pretty good odds!

So I admire Pu Songling's humor, but reject his first moral. The second? Well...

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio, by Pu Songling (c.1679); Herbert Giles translation (1908; Tuttle reprint 2010). Tale #122, pp. 364-5.

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