In the Water Margin
Wu Song ranks fourteenth among the 108 heroes under the star Tianshang (天伤星). He comes from Qinghe County, a tall, immensely strong young man who drinks hard and fights harder. Early in the novel he is hiding at Chai Jin's manor, believing he killed a man in a drunken brawl back home, and it is there, shivering with fever beside a brazier, that he first meets Song Jiang.
On his way home to see his elder brother, Wu Dalang, he kills a man-eating tiger with his bare hands and is made a constable in Yanggu County. Soon his brother is murdered, and the chain of revenge, exile and further bloodshed that follows makes him a wanted man. At Cross Slope, the innkeeper Sun Erniang gives him the robes and headband of a dead itinerant monk so that his loose hair can hide the brand on his face, and the disguise gives him his nickname, The Pilgrim. He joins Lu Zhishen and Yang Zhi at Two Dragon Mountain and comes to Liangshan Marsh with them.
Key episodes
- Jingyang Ridge. Ignoring a tavern's warning that no one who drinks three bowls can cross the ridge, Wu Song drinks far more and climbs the mountain at dusk. When his staff snaps against a tree, he pins the tiger's head and beats it to death with his fists.
- Avenging Wu Dalang. Learning that his brother was poisoned by his wife Pan Jinlian and her lover Ximen Qing, Wu Song kills them both and gives himself up to the magistrate.
- Drunken beating of Jiang Menshen. Exiled to Mengzhou, he repays Shi En's kindness by thrashing the bully who seized Shi En's tavern, drinking at every inn along the way.
- Mandarin Duck Tower. Framed by officials allied with Jiang Menshen and nearly murdered on the road, he returns at night, kills those responsible and writes on the wall that the tiger-slayer did it.
