The temple dedicated to Troung’s wife is located on one side of the Hoang river in the province of Ha Nam, Vu dien district, in the village of Vu dien. This is her story…
The Story of Troung's Wife
She married a man into the Troung family. After half a year gone by, her husband was drafted to go fight a distant war. When he left she was pregnant. Some months later she gave birth to a baby boy and named him Dan. During her husband’s absence, she sat with her child and would point to her own shadow and would tell him that is his father. After three years of service the husband came back home. At that time the boy could walk and talk. When his father called his name he replied: “You’re also my dad? How come you can talk now?
My dad used to be silent and he only came in the night. He sat where mom sat, and move when mom moved.”
The husband was struck by what his son had revealed to him. He became suspicious and began to interrogating his wife. His wife denied having an affair with another man; however, he did not believe her. He continued to give her a hard time, in despair she jumped into the Hoang river killed herself to prove her faithfulness.
Then one night, he sat with the child, and the kid pointed at a shadow of his father and said : “My dad has come back, see!”
The husband then realized that his wife has used her shadow as a surrogate father. He came to recognize the injustice he had done do his wife, he built her an altar on the river edge so that he can make offering to help free her soul. Eventually, the people in the village built a temple in her honor. King Lê Thánh Tông (1442-1497) on a tour to this province and passed by the temple, hearing the story he was touched thus composed a poem for her:
This column of incense smoke by the whirlpool
Is this the temple of the wife of Truong.
When the oil lamp is out, do not listen to the child,
Why the river to bring her misfortune.
Witnesses of her faithfulness are the sun and the moon
Why is it necessary to have an altar to redress the injustice
Passing by we learn the ins and outs of this story
Truong you have been too harsh!
(So the moral of the story is trust your woman
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Lê Thánh Tông reigned from 1460 to 1497. He was one of our enlightening king of the early Le dynasty. He was a great king, and was somewhat of a radical:
“Thánh Tông was strongly influenced by his Confucian teachers and he resolved to make Vietnam more like the Song Dynasty with its Neo-Confucianist philosophy and the key idea that the government should be run by men of noble character as opposed to men from noble families. This meant that he needed to take power away from the ruling families (mostly from Thanh Hóa province) and give power to the scholars who did well on the official examinations”
--Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%AA_Th%C3%A1nh_T%C3%B4ng