them all of their lands.[1] So the proverb says: “Landless jewel-makers.”[2] Again did the the Heavenly Sovereign cause[3] the Empress to be told, saying: “A child’s name must be given by the mother: by what august name shall this child be called?” Then she replied, saying: “As he was born now at the time of the castle being burnt with fire and in the midst of the fire, it were proper to call him by the august name of Prince[4] Homu-chi-wake.”[5] And again he caused her to be asked: “How shall he be reared?”[6] She replied, saying. “He must be reared by taking an august mother[7] and fixing on old bathing-women and young bathing-women.[8]” So he was respectfully reared in accordance with the Empress’s instructions. Again he asked the Empress, saying: “Who shall loosen the fresh small pendant[9] which thou didst make fast?” She replied, saying: “It were proper that Ye-hime and
- ↑ Or, as Motowori prefers to read, “deprived them of all their lands.”
- ↑ There is nowhere else any reference to this saying. Motowori supposes it to point to those who, hoping for reward, get punishment instead, these jewellers having doubtless rotted the string on which the beads were strung by special desire of the Empress, whereas they ended by getting nothing but confiscation for their pains.
- ↑ Motowori (following Mabuchi) is evidently correct in supposing the character 命 in this place, and again a little further on, to be a copyist’s error for 令, “caused,” and the translator has rendered it accordingly.
- ↑ “Prince” is here written 御子.
- ↑ This name may also be read Ho-muchi-wake, and is in the “Chronicles” given as Ho-mutsu-wake while it appears as Homu-tsu-wake at the commencement of Sect. LXIX. The first two elements apparently signify “fire-possessing,” while wake is the frequently recurring Honorific signifying either “lord” or “young and flourishing.”
- ↑ Lit., “his days be reverently prolonged.” The same expression is repeated thrice below.
- ↑ I.e., foster-mother.
- ↑ The characters 大湯坐若湯坐 used in the original of this passage would, if they stood alone, be of difficult interpretation. But a comparison with the passage in “One account” of the “Chronicles,” which relates the nursing of Fuki-ahezu-no-mikoto, the father of the first “Earthly Emperor” Jim-mu, leaves no doubt that the author intended to speak of bathing-women attached to the service of the Imperial infant.
- ↑ The words midzu no wo-himo, literally rendered “fresh small pendant,” call for some explanation. Midzu, which includes in a single term the ideas of
