Folk Persona Requiem
Author: Zhou Weihua.
According to the folk saying, people have three souls and seven spirits.
The three souls refer to the heavenly soul, the earth soul, and the human soul, also known as the fetal light, the cool spirit, and the ghost.
The seven spirits refer to the corpse dog, the arrow, the bird's yin, the thief swallower, the non-poisonous, the filthy, and the smelly lung.
Haha, these terms are so obscure that I don't read much, so I can't explain them to you all at once.
But when I was a child, the old people in the village often taught us children, and people relied on the spirit of the three souls and seven spirits to support us. None of these ten things can be missing.
If there is less, that person will lose his soul, and then he will be scared.
It seems that children are the most likely to lose their souls because of fright.
The main symptoms of frightened people are dizziness, dizziness, weakness, loss of appetite, and sometimes fever.
Some adults think it's a cold, but in fact, it's useless to give cold medicine to children.
Often at this time, some elderly people see the symptoms of children, and they will warn these young parents that the child must be scared, and they must find someone who understands to accept the scare.
I haven't seen the process of scaring with my own eyes.
I was very bold when I was a kid, and nothing scared me.
But sometimes when I play with my friends, I find that he (she) suddenly has black cotton coils on his or her neck, wrists, and ankles, and he is very curious, so he wants to touch two handfuls and pull a few times.
The little friend was immediately very nervous, not allowed to touch, nor let me pull, only said that my grandmother had just scared me, this coil can't be moved casually, and it must be worn until it falls off by itself.
Also, sometimes on the ridge outside the yard, on the side of the road at an intersection or fork in the road, it is common to see someone upside down a bowl of white rice with three red chili seeds on it.
Adults don't let children move around that thing, as if it was a form made by someone who had scared the child into believing in the Bodhisattva.
I have observed that the white rice is poured on the side of the road, and the dogs passing by are afraid to eat the rice.
Although I have not seen the scare, I have seen the soul-fishing.
An old aunt on the other side of the door, I and her two sons basically played from childhood to adulthood.
She seems to know a lot of formulas, which is quite interesting.
I've seen her go and fish for her soul twice.
The first time, it was her eldest son who fell into the Dejiang River and almost drowned half to death.
The child should have been scared a lot that time, and her family must have been scared.
Not only was she scared, but when it was almost dark, she took a sieve to the place where the child fell into the water on the river bridge.
It seems to be fishing three times in a row, like fishing.
Shouting the child's name while fishing, and then shouting the child's name all the way home.
How do you shout?Just shout: so-and-so (child's name), are you back?
Then ask yourself: It's back!
Repeat this until you get home.
I will never forget that in the twilight evening, a young and loving mother, carrying a wet sieve, shouted from the river at the bridge under the Dejiang River, and then asked and answered, and slowly returned home.
The long tone dragged on, and when I read about mother's love, prose, and poetry when I was sensible later, I would often think of the image of the old woman at my door.
One summer, when it was dark, her youngest son and I came back from grazing cattle on the ridge, and her youngest son drove the cow in front of me.
I was the one who pulled him up. But when he fell, we didn't tell the adults about it.
The kid may have been really scared that time. After a few days, the child had the same symptoms I wrote about earlier, and the whole person fell and felt uncomfortable.
Once, my sister-in-law was at my house talking to my parents about her youngest son. I told her about the last time her youngest son fell in Shenzhen.
When she heard this, she suddenly realized it, and immediately asked me very carefully about the exact location of the fall.
At that time, it was dark, and after listening to me explain it clearly, she borrowed my ash sieve and immediately ran to the water at the bottom of the moon pond.
I immediately took the flashlight at home and chased after her.
So, I saw the same image of her calling for the soul of her eldest son before.
The long and short, subdued and undulating, earnest, self-questioning and self-answering shouts echoed in my ears again.
This is the call of mother's love, the soul of the child thrown in the wind, the soul lost in the water, no matter how scattered and sparse it is, the mother will definitely gather you completely.
Damn, it's weird, after doing this program, her sick little son will be alive and well in a few days.
I've been adrift in the South for decades, but one thing I can assure my mother is that no matter how much her son wanders, he won't leave those three souls and seven spirits in a foreign land.
Brothers and sisters who are working hard, your mother can call you home for dinner, but don't let her fish for you to return home!
*: Boat of the boat.