and a blind person;[1] that [if they went out] by the Ohosaka[2] gate, they would likewise meet a lame person and a blind person, and that only the Ki gate,—a side gate,[3]—would be the lucky gate; and when they started off, they established the Homuji clan[4] in every place they arrived at. So when they had reached Idzumo and had finished worshipping the Great Deity, and were returning up [to the capital], they made in the middle of the River Hi[5] a black plaited bridge and respectfully offered a temporary palace [for the august child] to dwell in.[6] Then when the ancestor of the rulers of the Land of
- ↑ Or, “lame people and blind people,” a peculiarly unlucky omen for travellers, to whom, as Motowori remarks, sound feet and good eyesight are indispensable to carry them on their way.
- ↑ See Sect. LXIV, Note 25.
- ↑ In the text the word “gate” is here, by a copyist’s error, written “moon.” When the author says that the Ki gate, i.e., gate or exit leading to the province of Ki, is a “side-gate,” he means that it was not the one by which travellers would naturally have left the town:—the province of Ki, indeed, is to the South of Yamato where the capital was, whereas the province of Idzumo, whither they were bound, was to the north-west. This road into Ki over Matsuchi-yama is one famous in the classical poetry of Japan.
- ↑ Homuji-be. The meaning of the clause is that they granted the surname of Homuji to persons in every important locality through which they passed on their journey.
- ↑ See Sect. XVIII, Note 2.
- ↑ The signification of this passage is: “They built as a temporary abode for the prince a house in the River Hi (whether with its foundations actually in the water or on an island is left undetermined), connecting it with the main land by a bridge made of branches of trees twisted together and with their bark left on them” (this is here the import of the word “black”). Such bridges have been met with by the translator in the remote northern province of Deha, Where the country people call them shiba-bashi (or, rather, in their patois suba-bashi, i.e., “twig-bridges”). The traveller is so likely to fall through interstices into the stream below, that it is not to be wondered at that they should now be confined to the rudest localities.
said, caused the earth to resound with their trampling when they went out to do battle with Hani-yasu. A more probable derivation is from nara, the name of a kind of deciduous oak, the Quercus glandulifera. The word rendered “gate” should possibly be taken simply in the sense of “exit” or “approach.”
