With a message in their mouths

• message in their mouths → before Confucius's birth, his mother saw a fabulous beast with a jade tablet in its mouth bearing a prophesy
  • Crow: The Story of Confucius, Master Kung 45: 'a fabulous animal known as a chi lin appeared before the prospective mother, bearing in its mouth a jade tablet inscribed with a message prophesying future greatness for the son then about to be born. The young girl tied a silken scarf around the single horn of the animal and it disappeared the same night, only (according to the story) to reappear more than seventy years later, just after the death of Master Kung'

• message in their mouths → in Cao Xueqin's 18th century Chinese novel The Story of the Stone (The Dream of the Red Chamber), the jade stone on which the story is written is found in the mouth of Jia Baoyu when he is born