Person
De Lai
A legendary figure in the north, son of De Nghi; the man Au Co belonged to before she met Lac Long Quan.
At a glance
- Role
- In the north, he made a tour southward; finding the country without a ruler, he left his favourite concubine Au Co and her serving women at a travelling palace and went off to see the sights — and that journey is where the legend turns to Lac Long Quan1
- Family
- Chinese works record De Lai as the son of De Nghi, and so a grandson of De Minh, while Kinh Duong Vuong was De Nghi’s younger brother; Ngo Si Lien traced this and conceded that Lac Long Quan and Au Co were of one blood, and closely so. His relation to Au Co differs between books: Linh Nam chich quai calls her his favourite concubine, the Toan thu writes her as his daughter21
- End
- He returned to the travelling palace to find nobody there and sent his men searching everywhere; Lac Long Quan used his powers to turn into demons, devils, dragons, snakes, tigers and elephants, frightening them until none dared come near, and he gave up and went back north1
- Earliest record
- His name really does occur in the genealogy of the line of Viem De Than Nong in De vuong the ky, a Jin dynasty work whose original is lost and whose genealogical passage survives only as quoted in Thai Binh ngu lam, book 78; there he stands two generations from De Minh with De Truc between them, not a grandson as the Vietnamese histories arrange him3
Life
Legend has it
In Linh Nam chich quai he appears exactly once, and loses. Making a tour southward and finding the country without a ruler, he left his favourite concubine Au Co and her serving women at a travelling palace and went off to see the sights. Lac Long Quan came back, saw how beautiful Au Co was, and turned himself into a handsome young man to go to her; she consented, and he took her away. De Lai returned to find nobody there and sent his men searching everywhere, but Long Quan used his powers to turn into demons, devils, dragons, snakes, tigers and elephants, frightening them until none dared come near. He gave up and went back north, and the legend does not mention him again.1
The old chronicles say
Ngo Si Lien’s national history changes his part from a man whose concubine was taken to a man who gives his daughter in marriage: the Toan thu writes that Lac Long Quan married the daughter of De Lai, whose name was Au Co, the original classical Chinese using the character nu, meaning daughter. But that very change created a snag the historian saw for himself. Consulting Chinese works, he found De Lai recorded as the son of De Nghi, and De Nghi and Kinh Duong Vuong were brothers, which made Lac Long Quan and Au Co of one blood, and closely so. He set his unease down in the book: perhaps it was because that age was still wild, and rites and music not yet established, that it was so.2
The name De Lai was not invented by the Vietnamese. De vuong the ky, a Chinese work of the Jin dynasty whose original is lost but whose genealogical passage survives quoted in Thai Binh ngu lam, book 78, lists the line of Viem De Than Nong as eight generations in succession: De Thua, De Lam, De Minh, De Truc, De Lai, De Ai, De Du Vong. There De Minh and De Lai stand two generations apart in a single line, with De Truc between them. The Vietnamese histories took those two names and refitted them into a different family structure, skipping the man in the middle and adding De Nghi, who does not appear in the original list at all.3
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