Thread by @serbiaireland

Thread: Yesterday, while I was writing my thread about animal calendar markers in Chinese legends about the Dragon-Horse, I came across this legend, also featuring a horse as an animal calendar marker: The legend about the Silkworm Goddess with horse's head...

It goes like this:

A man goes away (on business or to war) and doesn't return (gets stuck somewhere or gets killed). After a year, either the man's wife promises to marry her daughter to whoever brings her husband back, or the man's daughter promises to marry whoever brings her father back...

This was overheard by the man's horse, who runs away, and soon brings the man back home. The horse then expects the mother (daughter) to keep their promise. But of course they completely ignore the horse, which gets more and more agitated, angry and even tries to bite the girl...

The man, surprised with the behavior of once gentle and placid animal, asks his wife (daughter) if they knew what could have angered the horse. So they tell him about the pledge they made...

The man then kills the horse, skins it, and leaves the skin stretched out to dry. The daughter passes by the horse's skin, which springs on her, envelops her and runs away with her...

The skin still containing the girl inside is eventually found hanging down from a branch of a mulberry tree. The girl then transforms into a silkworm...And eventually she becomes known as the Silkworm Goddess who rode on a Silkworm horse...

In another version of the story, the girl actually had a horse's head to start with...

What does this all mean?

Well commonly accepted explanation is that all this horsing around is because the silkworm's head looks like a horse's head...
But, I think, there is a lot better explanation...And it's all about climate in China and the annual lifecycle of horses, silkworms and mulberry trees...

The cycle of sericulture (silkworm farming) begins 10 days before the mid-April date when the mulberry trees break into leaf...

Rolls of paper dotted with eggs are brought in from storage and allowed to mature at room temperature. In the olden days, before good heating, the eggs were placed in the clothing to be warmed by body heat...

In mid-April, the worms hatch and are immediately brushed into bamboo baskets. Feeding starts right away with finely chopped, tender mulberry leaves. As the worms grow and the baskets become congested, the silkworms are redistributed into more spacious quarters...

Feeding continues with progressively coarser pieces of mulberry leaf. Toward the last week or so, the voracious worms consume 20 times their own weight in leaves, which then are fed to them by the branch...

By the 35th day, the worms indicate they are ready to spin cocoons. When they stop feeding and assume a semi-erect position, the silk farmer transfers them to straw trusses, with about 60-70 on each truss...

Liquid silk is secreted from two silk glands which run the length of the worm's body. As the liquid emerges, it is coated with sericin, a glandular excretion. This causes the liquid to harden as it meets the air...

The thread of silk comes out in a continuous figure-of-eight pattern for about five days until the worm is completely enclosed in a casing made up of an uninterrupted thread of silk, usually 800-1,200 yards long...

Some of the cocoons are selected for perpetuating the species for next year's silk. These are allowed to emerge as moths after 8-10 days and then are paired. The females lay their minute eggs on sheets of paper, which then are washed, dried, and hung up in storage...

The rest of the cocoons are removed for unreeling. The cocoons are immersed in hot water to kill the chrysalis. The end of the filament is found, and the silk is unwound...

Amazing...But what does this have to do with horses...Well, guess what happens in April too? The natural mating season of horses begins...Stallions get agitated, aggressive and start fighting each other for mating rights...

The horse fertility is governed by the sunlight. It starts in Apr, peaks on summer solstice and finishes in Sep...I talked about this in these articles:

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/06/trojan…
oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/09/unicor…

This link between horses fertility and mating season and the sunlight makes horse perfect solar animal symbol...Which it is, all over Eurasia. Since Bronze Age. I talked about it this thread

https://twitter.com/serbiaireland/status/1405588128681844737

Interesting right? Just like in the story about the Silkworm Goddess. A horny stallion, and the girl which was promised to him (mating season), get transformed into a silkworm which happens to have "a head of a horse and a soft white body of a lady" (ugh)...

But basically, all this means is that the silkworm farming cycle starts when the horses start mating and mulberry trees get their leaves...In April...

What about Chinese climate? According to this paper (hindawi.com/journals/psych…) it seems that silkworms need exactly the right temperature to thrive: 20°C and 28°C. Temperature above 30°C and below 20°C directly affects the health of the worm...

Which is the temperature in Northern China between April (when silk worm eggs hatch) and June (when silkworm moths emerge)...Or between the beginning of the horses mating season and the peak of the horses mating season for instance (Zhengzhou, Xian)...

Sources:

chinaknowledge.de/History/Myth/p…
jsma.uoregon.edu/sites/jsma2.uo…
worldoftales.com/Asian_folktale…
shine.cn/feature/art-cu…
taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=…

You might want to have a look at my yesterday's thread about Horse-Dragon too

https://twitter.com/serbiaireland/status/1449454719328473094

More about animal calendar markers found in ancient cultures, start here oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/p/animal-solar…… then check the rest of the blog posts I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 7 months behind now 🙂🙁