Folk Legends
Tanabata
Tanabata's father was not happy that she had married a man from the world below. He gave the young man hard work to do, hoping to make him miserable. "You'll guard the melon field for three days and three nights," he said. Watching the melon field made the young man extremely thirsty, but if he ate one of the melons, it was said that something terrible would happen. Tanabata told him, "You absolutely cannot eat one of those melons."
But as the three days went by, the young man grew thirsty and became unable to bear it any longer. He reached for a melon. The instant he did, water burst forth from the fruit and became a flowing river. "Darling!" "Tanabata!" In an instant the two were pulled apart from each other.
The two lovers looking across the river at each other became the stars Altair and Vega. Tanabata's father allows them to meet, but only once a year, on the night of July 7. To this day these two stars face each other across the Milky Way, shining brightly.