Folk songs are an oral tradition that the Vietnamese people have preserved for four thousand years of their history behind the bamboo hedges of the village. They are often used as a popular expression reflecting the daily life and thoughts of the peasants in opposition to the scholars imposing morality and enclosing the individual in morality and in the imperative network of rites and obligations with their scholarly literature written in nôm.
According to writer Thuần Phong, folk song is considered by Vietnamese intellectuals to be the most characteristic and specifically Vietnamese literary genre, because it is oral literature, anonymous and originating in the rural world. Moreover, ca dao is a song without verse divisions and without musical accompaniment. Six-eight is the metre for folk songs. Different types of ca dao are performed from North to South:
lullaby (ru con) in the North, (hát đưa em) in the South, sampan song (đò đưa), war drum songs (trống quân) and so on. Despite this, folk song is expounded with a view to respecting the established order on the five duties and three relationships (Ngũ Thường and Tam Cang) of Confucian and feudal society and manifesting common sense, wisdom, love of life, optimism, satire of feudal society.
As Vietnam is an agricultural country, the peasant’s daily life is always dominated by factors he cannot control in advance, such as floods, droughts, typhoons and so on. His existence is a perpetual struggle. What’s more, in the event of a foreign invasion, the peasant must take up arms and defend the land. From then on, it’s the wife who has to take over from him, replacing him in all the daily chores. These day-to-day difficulties are often cited in folk song, where the peasant not only enjoys a certain freedom, however restricted, to express his human feelings, but also has the opportunity to create a verbal world in which villains are castigated and sneered, and to depict his beloved animals with realism and precision. Such is the case with familiar animals like the egret, the buffalo and the pig.
As a hunter-gatherer animal that looks noble and innocent in the rice fields and closer to the peasants, the egret has to search hard for food day and night, but it can fly away freely at any time towards the blue sky, as so many peasants dream of always having faith in the future and optimism as opposed to the scholar. For the peasant, freedom is priceless, despite the daily toil he is accustomed to sharing with the buffalo. As for the pig, it’s synonymous with wealth and prosperity.
The folk song quoted below evokes the fate of peasants in the face of calamity under feudal rule. Analogous to the egret, the peasant does not escape death, but she wishes to die with dignity rather than in dishonor. This is the essence of the folk song that has won the admiration of generations of Vietnamese.
Con cò mà đi ăn đêm,
Đậu phải cành mềm lộn cổ xuống ao.
Ông ơi, ông vớt tôi nào,
Tôi có lòng nào ông hãy xáo măng.
Có xáo thì xáo nước trong,
Đừng xáo nước đục đau lòng cò con.
The egret searching for food at night
From a flexible branch has fallen into the pond
Sir, please fish me out of here
If I’ve done wrong, you can cook me with bamboo shoots.
But if it’s done, it’s better to do it in clear water
Cloudy water would hurt the little egret’s heart
The image of the buffalo is closely linked to Vietnam’s rural landscape. Buffalo are often seen harrowing the soil after ploughing in rice fields. This is why the buffalo’s arduous task is described in the following folk songs:
Trâu ơi ta bảo trâu này
Trâu ra ngoài ruộng trâu cày với ta.
Cầy cấy vốn nghiệp nông gia
Ta đây trâu đấy ai mà quản công.
O my buffalo, listen to what I say
You go to the rice field and plough with me;
Ploughing and transplanting is a ploughman’s trade
Here I am, here you are, who of us pities his pain.
Trên đồng cạn dưới đồng sâu,
Chồng bừa vợ cấy con trâu đi cày.
In the low rice field and in the deep rice field,
The husband harrows, the wife transplanting, the buffalo ploughing.
Analogous to the buffalo, the pig is also an animal often cited in Vietnamese folk songs. It is first used to describe the situation of a polygamous person in Vietnam:
Một vợ nằm giường lèo,
Hai vợ nằm chèo queo,
Ba vợ thì xuống chuồng heo mà nằm.
With one woman, you have the right to sleep in the bed in a decent way,
With two wives, you start sleeping on your own.
But with three wives, you deserve to be in the pigsty.
The criticism is scathing for people who mistreat their colleagues when they are poor and destitute, and who bow their heads and show their docility to powerful and wealthy people:
Mèo tha miếng thịt xôn xao,
Hùm tha con lợn thì nào thấy chi
We become agitated when the cat snatches a piece of meat,
We remain impassive when the tiger devours a pig.
We use physiognomy to give an indication about a person we meet:
Trông mặt mà bắt hình dong,
Con lợn có béo thì lòng mới ngon.
By looking at someone’s face, you already have an idea of his personality, just as in the case of a fat pig, you know that it always has delicious guts.
It’s also through popular song that we come to know the farmer’s deep attachment to his native land. The water of his pond is the most pleasant despite the vagaries of nature and the ups and downs of the life he has had.
Ta về ta tắm ao ta
Dù trong dù đục ao nhà vẫn hơn
Let’s go back home and bathe in our pond.
Whether the water is clear or turbid, our pond is always better.