Chim Ây

Chim Ây is the male of the primordial pair of birds in the Mường creation epic Đẻ đất đẻ nước. After earth and water are born and the colossal si (banyan-fig) tree of the world has risen, Chim Ây and his mate Cái Ứa build their nest in its branches and produce a great clutch of eggs. From these eggs hatch the ancestors of the Mường, the Kinh (Việt) and the other peoples, so that the two birds stand at the head of the human genealogy. Sources vary in the number of eggs and in whether the birds are also called chim Tùng and chim Tót, but the mated pair Ây and Ứa is the constant figure of the hatching episode.

Children

• Lang Cun Cần

Domains

• creation

Powers

• lays the eggs of the peoples

Epithets

• chim Ây cái Ứa — the bird Ây and the hen ỨaĐặng Văn Lung, Vương Anh, Hoàng Anh Nhân, Mo: sử thi và thần thoại dân tộc Mường (Hà Nội: NXB Khoa học Xã hội) (secondary)

Relations

• spouse: Cái ỨaMated pair of world-birds who together produce the primordial clutch.Đẻ đất đẻ nước (NXB Khoa học Xã hội, 1976), đoạn đôi chim Ây - Ứa làm tổ đẻ trứng (primary)

Sources

• In the Mường creation epic a pair of birds, Chim Ây (male) and Cái Ứa (female), nest in the cosmic si tree and lay the eggs from which humankind and the ancestors of the ethnic groups are hatched.: Đẻ đất đẻ nước (sử thi Mường), Vương Anh – Hoàng Anh Nhân – Bùi Thiện sưu tầm (NXB Khoa học Xã hội, Hà Nội, 1976) (primary); Jeanne Cuisinier, Les Mường: géographie humaine et sociologie (Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie, 1948), sur la cosmogonie et l'arbre du monde (secondary)