Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1888 — Festival of the Devil. [ARTICLE]

Festival of the Devil.

The Devil Festival is said to have originated in a legend of the mother of a fabulous person, Mu-lien; she was about the wickedest then in existence, theresbeing no crime which she left uncommitted. After her death she appeared one night to her son Mu-lien with a heavy wooden collar round about her neck, and she harrowed his soul with the tale of her sufferings in the lower regions.' She said she was enduring the penalty for her unnumbered sins during her early life, and pleaded with her son to deliver her out of the hands of Pluto. This to him seemed

an impossible task, as no human being can enter the dark regions and return alive. She told him he must become a Buddhist priest, and that there was a door in a certain Buddhist temple which he could open, and so let out the prisoners from the shades below. !The son, being filial, obeyed the behest of his mother and sought out a welliknown Buddhist priest in a certain famous temple and asked to be admitted as a novice. As his life was pure, the priest willingly admitted him. lAfter having been there several months and learned all the Buddhist prayers he sought out the door that led to the Dower Shades, whither the wicked ones hail gone, and, remembering his mother’s instruction, he knocked open the door. The Judge Pluto being always willing to release his victims upon the intercession of saints, he has set all his prisoners free for a certain length of time every year, beginning on the 15th of the seventh moon, ever since the time when St. Mu-lien opened that door. It has become customary for the people throughout the country, in the seventh moon of every year, to worship their ancestors, whose spirits are then at large. The annual Devil Festival held by the Cantonese and Fuhkienese began to-day by theatricals, etc., at their cemetery below Hsing Hua Chun. It will last three days and three nights. The people from Canton and Fuhkien provinces are not few, and those whose remains are buried here are numerous. The amount of paper clothes, money, etc., burned to the departed is consequently very great. The spectators of theatrical plays rush in from every part of the city. The streets are enlivened by numerous passing mule carts and jinrikshas.—London Queen.