Song of the Chile Plains

Introduction

Sung by Hulü Jin for Gao Huan after the defeat at Yubi in 546; first sung in a Xianbei tongue

Song of the Chile Plains is a folk song of the Northern Dynasties, and the Song scholar Guo Maoqian took it into his Collection of Yuefu Poetry, where it stands among the best-known pieces. In 546, after Gao Huan of the Eastern Wei was badly defeated at the siege of Yubi and his army was shaken, Hulü Jin sang this song to console him; Gao Huan wept, and the troops were steadied. The Yuefu Guangti notes that the song was first sung in a Xianbei language and later rendered into Chinese, which is why its lines are uneven in length. It pictures the wide grasslands below the Yin Mountains and the herds grazing on them, in plain words and on a vast scale. The Collection of Yuefu Poetry runs to one hundred volumes in twelve classes of song texts, from temple hymns and banquet songs to drum-and-pipe and harmony songs, and it is the main anthology through which such early songs survive.