Twice ToldYuefu shiji 73: Cui Bao's note on "Qi Liang's Wife" and the monk Guanxiu's poem
- Language
- Chinese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 17 October 2026
The Yuefu shiji (樂府詩集) is a Song collection of ballad texts compiled by Guo Maoqian; the scan reproduces a Jigu ge print held at the Hanfenlou in Shanghai, as the Wikisource edition notice reads it. Under the heading “Qi Liang’s Wife” the first item is a poem by Wu Maiyuan, which we do not give. Before it comes a note quoting Cui Bao’s Gujin zhu on the song’s origin, the Lienü zhuan, and the Qincao. The second item, headed 同前 (“the same, as above”), is the poem by the monk Guanxiu. The print has no punctuation; the punctuation below is ours.
崔豹古今注曰：「杞梁妻者，杞殖妻妹朝日之所作也。殖戰死，妻曰：『上則無父，中則無夫，下則無子，人生之苦至矣。』乃抗聲長哭，杞都城感之而頹，遂投水而死。其妹悲姊之貞，乃作歌，名曰杞梁妻焉。梁，殖之字也。」 同前 僧貫休 秦之無道兮四海枯，築長城兮遮北胡。築人築土一萬里，杞梁貞婦啼嗚嗚。上無父兮中無夫，下無子兮孤復孤。一號城崩塞色苦，再號杞梁骨出土。疲魂飢魄相逐歸，陌上少年莫相非。
Translation
Cui Bao’s Gujin zhu says: “‘Qi Liang’s Wife’ was written by Zhaori, the younger sister of Qi Zhi’s wife. When Zhi died in battle, his wife said, ‘Above me there is no father, in the middle no husband, below me no son; life’s suffering has reached its utmost.’ She raised her voice in a long wail, the capital city of Qǐ was moved by it and fell in, and she threw herself into the water and died. Her sister grieved for the older woman’s chastity and made a song, and named it ‘Qi Liang’s Wife.’ Liang is Zhi’s courtesy name.”
The same, by the monk Guanxiu:
The Qin lost the Way, and the whole realm withered. They built a long wall to keep out the northern Hu. Men and earth piled up for ten thousand li, and Qi Liang’s faithful wife wept aloud there. Above her no father, in the middle no husband, below her no son: alone, and alone again. At her first cry the wall fell, and the frontier light turned bitter. At her second cry Qi Liang’s bones came out of the earth. Weary souls and hungry ghosts go home together. Young men on the road, do not speak ill of them.
Notes
- Cui Bao’s note has no Great Wall and no Qin: the city that falls is “the capital city of Qǐ” (杞都城), and the widow’s words (“above no father, in the middle no husband, below no son”) are the ones Guanxiu reuses. Gu Yanwu (Rizhilu 25) points out that Qǐ’s capital was not the Qin wall.
- 塞色苦: the print reads 塞 (“frontier”). The Wikisource text (Siku quanshu edition) and the translations of Idema and Wu Zhen have 寒 (“cold”), which we take to be a variant of the same line; the print’s 塞 makes “the frontier light turned bitter”.
- 飢魄: the print has 飢 where other texts have 饑. Same meaning.
- 莫相非: 非 is “to find fault with, to blame”. Idema renders “should speak no words of abuse”; Wu Zhen renders “Your fate will probably be no different”. We read the line as an address to the young men on the road, telling them not to blame the returning dead, but the line is ambiguous and the translation is tentative.
- Guanxiu is dated 832 to 912 by Idema (Meng Jiangnü Brings Down the Great Wall, p. 10) and Wu Zhen (p. 20). The poem is also in the Quan Tang shi, vol. 826, p. 9304 (Wu Zhen’s note 3), which we did not see.