"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."

December 30, 2005 4:56 AM

I'm looking for a certain story or legend about a woman who's village was invaded by troops. She kills them with kindness (or, more probably, knives)

I was talking with my aunt a few days ago and she told me she'd heard a story about Chiang Mai, Thailand. The story she had heard was this:

The Chinese were coming to invade a town. (my aunt thought Chiang Mai)
There's a woman that knows they're coming and, being vastly outnumbered, she convinces the men of the village to run off and hide somewhere.
The army rides into the village the next day to find only the women.
The women act happy to see them, maybe talking trash about how all of the men had left the village weeks/months/years before.
The army doesn't attack and stays the night in the town.
The women treat them like welcome guests, serving them food, maybe getting them good and liquored up.
Night comes and the men of the army go to sleep.
(you see where this is going?)
During the night while they sleep, the women kill them all.

My aunt thought she had heard that there was a statue that commemorated this woman in Chiang Mai. But, having spent some time there, I had heard of neither the story nor the statue.

Googling for different sets of terms like women men fled/hid killed sleep/slept Chinese don't bring me much other than horrible recent stories of war crimes and such.

As a boy I can remember reading a beautifully illustrated children's book—I think it was Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves—which involved a woman convincing the bad guys (a bunch of 'em) to hide in these big ceramic water jars. Then she and her friends filled them through holes in the lids with boiling oil.

My point being that maybe this is just an old fairy tale or something. Either way, it'd be nice to be able to let me aunt know for sure.

posted by blueberry to Grab Bag (9 answers total)

Response by poster: Argh, "...a woman whose village was invaded by troops".
posted by blueberry at 5:05 AM on December 30, 2005

Neil Gaiman retells a similar story in Sandman: Endless Nights. I don't have the book right in front of me, but there is a similar story. The one he tells is about a Nordic culture of some sort.
posted by Medieval Maven at 7:04 AM on December 30, 2005

Medieval, that's a pretty different story actually, the one in Endless Nights has a woman using (D)esire to keep the man interested in her and competing for her attention until the next morning, when the men of her village come back and kill them.
posted by KirTakat at 7:40 AM on December 30, 2005

Could be a story that has its origins in the Biblical story of Judith and Holofernes.
posted by MsMolly at 7:46 AM on December 30, 2005

Ditto MsMolly; this immediately reminded me of the Book of Judith--which is, by the way, a kickass story, and also inspired some very good Renaissance and Baroque art. Shame it got relegated to the Apocrypha and isn't taught more in either Jewish or Christian religious schools.

(Full text here.)
posted by Asparagirl at 8:11 AM on December 30, 2005

When I read this it made me think I had heard the story as a Greek myth but as you can imagine googling "sleep greek myth" turns up pretty much every Greek myth ever....
posted by phearlez at 8:55 AM on December 30, 2005

Maybe you're thinking of the Lizzies from The Warriors?
posted by glibhamdreck at 10:55 AM on December 30, 2005

Best answer: You're thinking about Khunying Ya Mo in Korat/Nakhon Ratchasima.
posted by the cuban at 12:04 PM on January 2, 2006 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you the cuban! I'll pass this info on to my aunt.
posted by blueberry at 7:30 PM on January 2, 2006