Long ago, there lived a clever, diligent, and honest boy. Orphaned and poor, he adopted an abandoned old buffalo. The loyal buffalo helped him with the hard labor in the fields, and they were inseparable. The villagers thus knew him as the Cowherd.
Meanwhile, the youngest of the seven celestial princesses grew weary of her privileged yet secluded life in heaven. Longing for the mundane world below, she secretly descended to Earth. There, she found the Cowherd, with whom she had secretly fallen in love from afar.
They married and had two lovely children. The Cowherd worked the fields with his buffalo, while the princess wove at home. Her skill was so admired that she became known as the Weaving Girl.
Their peaceful life was shattered when her celestial family discovered her absence. In heaven, a day equals years on Earth, so her time with the Cowherd was brief by celestial measure. The furious Celestial Empress gave her a cruel choice: return or see her family destroyed. Heartbroken, the Weaving Girl had to leave.
As the Cowherd grieved, his old buffalo spoke, revealing it was dying. It instructed him to use its hide as a vehicle to chase his wife. Carrying his children in baskets on a shoulder pole, the Cowherd sailed to heaven.
To stop him, the Empress drew a vast river across the sky with her hairpin—the Silvery River (the Milky Way). She aimed to separate them forever.
Deeply moved by their love, all the magpies in the world come to their aid. Every year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, they form a bridge across the river, allowing the family a brief, joyous reunion.