Note 7 — XII.—LEGENDS OF LOCALITY, HOUSEHOLD TALES, &c.

Like the Italian original of our own popular and faithless Punch, his Chinese brother has a legendary origin. Punch and Judy shows, indeed, are, in some quarters, alleged to have been introduced into Europe from China. Be that as it may Po-tai-hsi (布袋戲), so called because the showman used to cover his head with a linen bag in order that his face might not distract attention from the puppets, date back to at least 260 B.C. The received legend asserts that about this date a lady named Oh, (閼) wife of a general named Mao-tun, was besieging the city of Ping in Shen-si. Its defender Chan-ping knowing the lady to be of a very jealous disposition, invented a puppet in the shape of a wooden woman, which was made by strings and springs to dance on the battlements of the beleaguered town. As he intended, Mrs. Oh became alarmed at the idea of so fascinating a creature falling into her husband’s hands and becoming an addition to his seraglio; and she consequently raised the siege! In memory of this “happy thought” similar, but smaller, puppets were constructed whose antics have for two thousand years amused the Chinese populace. The principal puppet used to be known as “Kwoh, the bald” in memory, as it is averred, of a man of that name who having lost his hair in sickness began on his recovery to jump and dance.7 Rather hazy and contradictory ideas indeed prevail in China of the origin of the amusing vagabond, different stories being told at different places. So simple an explanation as that of some ingenious native having determined to turn an honest penny by reproducing in miniature the jokes of the stage, seems however to have been ignored. I may in passing note that Lord Macartney, in his Journal, speaks highly of these exhibitions. The pandean pipe of the drummer is in China replaced by that most ear-splitting of instruments, a native clarionet.