World Children's Story Classics: Family Stories

Chapter 77 The Old Man Under the Moon
In the Tang Dynasty, there was a young man named Wei Gu who lost his father when he was young. When he grew up, he wanted to marry a wife and start a family early to enjoy the warmth of the family. Unexpectedly, he tried to find a matchmaker many times, but he always failed to achieve his wish.Once, he passed by Songcheng, and saw an old man sitting on the steps in front of the temple, leaning on a cloth bag, flipping through a book in the moonlight.Wei Gu thought it was strange, so he went to read it, but he couldn't recognize the words written on the book, so he asked the old man what book he was reading. The old man replied: "It's the marriage book of people in the world."The old man replied: "That is a red rope specially tied to the feet of husband and wife. The man and woman in the umbrella are destined to be husband and wife. When they are born, they will secretly tie their feet with a red rope. That is to say, people with feuds come from poor families. Families with far-flung wealth and people who are far away from each other, as long as they are tied by the red rope, they will never be able to separate or escape.” After hearing this, Wei Gu happily asked the old man to tell him who his wife was?The old man was not in a hurry. After dawn, the old man rolled up the book, took the cloth bag, and went to the market together with Wei Gu. When he saw a blind old man walking over with a three-year-old girl with scars on his eyebrows, the old man was right. Wei Gu said: "This girl is your future wife." After hearing this, Wei Gu was very angry, thinking that the old man was deliberately teasing him, so he ignored it. Fourteen years later, Wang Tai, the governor of Xiangzhou, valued Wei Gu's talents and betrothed his daughter to Wei Gu.On the wedding night in the bridal chamber, Wei Gu found that his wife was very beautiful, but there was a scar between her eyebrows and eyes. After questioning, she learned that it was indeed the girl that the blind old man embraced.Wei Gu told his wife what had happened before, and the couple were amazed.

According to this story, later generations used "the old man under the moon" as an idiom to describe the god or matchmaker in charge of marriage.

(End of this chapter)