九尾狐狸壓龍洞狐母 · 28
Leaf 28 of the pilgrimage · 九尾狐 The Nine-Tailed Fox
Nine-Tailed Vixen 九尾狐狸
In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · a demon on the road west · nicknamed 九尾狐 “The Nine-Tailed Fox”
She is a demon's mother on paper only: fetched out of her cave by an invitation to eat the monk, and spent for an afternoon as a suit of clothes.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 34
Coming with the Golden Snare
手書來請Her sons wrote to ask her to come a long way off and help with the monkey, and to bring the golden snare with her; two devils started up the mountain road with the letter.
- ch. 34
The Rope from Press-Dragon Cave
壓龍赴宴She set out from Press-Dragon Cave with the rope, on the understanding that the Tang priest's flesh was on the table.
- ch. 34
True Form Under the Cudgel
棒下現形The monkey was waiting on the path wearing the faces of her sons' messengers. One stroke, and what lay in the road was a nine-tailed fox rather than an old woman.
- ch. 34
Bowed to in the Lotus Cave
蓮洞拜母He put on her shape, went down into the cave, and let a horned demon king make his obeisances to a monkey while the whole court knelt behind him.
- ch. 35
The Kinsman's Mourning Band
舅兵報喪The family did come for her. A kinsman brought armed followers to the cave to make good the loss, and was killed on the hill by the pig.
結局 The ending
She is dead before the middle of the chapter and nobody grieves her but a kinsman who arrives too late and dies for it. Her snare is copied, her face is worn, and her sons are undone by the errand they sent her on. Laojun comes at the end for the rope and never mentions the woman who was carrying it — the novel's blunkest word on what such families are worth to heaven.
The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials