Farmers' daughters

So innocent. So down.

Luofu Picking Mulberries, by modern atists Liu Lingcang and Guo Muxi

Jade Pavilion Songs (2)
Quan Deyu

Demure and coy,
    This loveliness,
        Just fifteen years,
In orchard south
    Encountering
        As evening nears.
I ask her when
    We’ll meet again,
        She will not speak,
Just points for me,
    A lovers’ inn,
        Where flowers fall deep.

权德舆  玉台体十二首·其二
婵娟二八正娇羞，日暮相逢南陌头。
试问佳期不肯道，落花深处指青楼。

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This long series of poems is in a style called court poetry, which essentially means that it was not meant to be morally improving, but offered upper-class sensual pleasures. The name of the series, Jade Pavilion Songs, comes from an anthology of poetry in this style which was released during the period of disunity before the Tang. Conventionally, that period has been remembered as a time of general immorality, when the upper classes indulged themselves rather than running the world properly - hence the failure of the empire to hold together.

Number two in the series makes very little sense. It’s all about a feeling, an image, a fantasy. The pretty girls are always out in the fields south of the village, and this one is no exception. They’re always demure and shy. And yet… they’re somehow also pliable and eager. This little maid - sixteen by the Chinese count, which means she’s 14 or 15 years old - is virginal enough to be embarrassed by the poet’s attentions, so embarrassed that she can’t speak. But she’s also old enough to know exactly where the local love hotel/brothel is, and willing to indicate to him that they should meet up there!

I was going to say that it’s silly but beguiling, but actually, on this particular day in November 2024, I find that I’m not beguiled by it at all. So let me offer it to you as a late Halloween idea instead: the tradfarmlass, soon to become the tradwife, a mythical creature to be brought out strictly for fun alongside the sexy nurse and Morticia Addams.