Legend of the Blue Willow
© Virginia Marin
I adore Blue Willow. In fact, I have an uncontrollable passion for collecting any china in blue and white. To leave a store in which I have fallen in love with a piece is actually quite impossible. Only an insufferable price serves as a deterrent and, sometimes, even that fails to contain my exuberance.
THE blue and white china pattern known as Blue Willow is the only blue and white I have come across, to date, which is based on a legend. There are several versions, but each retains the legend's core parts.
The tale has also been recorded in poem. This one, author unknown, is but one lovely example of the legend in rhyme.
Pictorial, painted in blue
From the land of tea and the tea plant
And the little brown man with a queue.
Whatever the food to be served
Romance does enter the feast
If you only pay heed to the legend
On the old china plate from the East.
Koong-Shee was a mandarin's daughter
And Chang was her sweetheart, ah me
For surely her father's accountant
Might never wed pretty Koong-Shee
So Chang was expelled from the compound
The beautiful alliance to break
And pretty Koong-Shee was imprisoned
In a little blue house by the lake.
The Dour old mandarin reasoned
It was time that his daughter should wed
And the groom of his choosing shall banish
That silly romance from her head.
While friends of Koong-Shee imagined
In symbols the dress she should wear
Her husband to be sat thinking
She should ride in a gold wedding chair.
He was busily plotting and planning
When a message was brought him one day
Young Chang had invaded the palace
And taken his promised away.
They were over the bridge when he saw them
They were passing the big willow tree
And a boat at the edge of the water
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