Matsu goddess: Encyclopedia II - Matsu goddess - The person

Matsu goddess - The person

According to legend, Lin Muoniang (林默娘) was born in 960 (during the early Northern Song Dynasty) as the seventh daughter of Lin Yuan (林愿) on Meizhou Island, Fujian. She did not cry when she was born, and thus her given name means "Silent Girl."

There are many legends about her and the sea.

Although she started swimming relatively late at the age of 15, she soon became an excellent swimmer. She wore red standing on the shore to guide fishing boats home, even in the most dangerous and harsh weather.

According to one legend, Lin Muoniang's father and brothers were fishermen. One day, a terrible typhoon arose while they were out at sea, and the rest of her family feared that those at sea had perished. In the midst of this storm, depending on the version of the legend, she either fell into a trance while praying for the lives of her father and brothers or dreamed of her father and brothers while she was sleeping. In either the trance or the dream, her father and brothers were drowning, and she reached out to them, holding her brothers up with her hands and her father up with her mouth. However, Muoniang's mother now discovered her and tried to wake her, but Muoniang was in such a deep trance or dream that it seemed like she was dead. Muoniang's mother, already believing the rest of their family dead, now broke down, crying, believing that Muoniang had also just died. Hearing her mother's cries, in pity, Muoniang gave a small cry to let her mother know she was alive, but in opening her mouth, she was forced to drop her father. Consequently, Muoniang's brothers returned alive (sadly without their father) and told the other villagers that a miracle had happened and that they had somehow been held up in the water as a typhoon raged.

There are at least two versions of Lin Muoniang's death. In one version, she died in 987 at the age of 28, when she climbed a mountain alone and flew to heaven and became a goddess. Another version of the legend says that she died at age 16 of exhaustion after swimming far into the ocean trying to find her lost father and that her corpse later washed ashore in Nankan Island of the Matsu Islands.

Lin Muoniang (2000), a minor Fujianese TV series, is a dramatization of the life of Matsu as a mortal.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The person", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki