Augustness[1] Princess Ya-kaha take the great august liquor-cup and present it. Thereupon, while taking the great august liquor-cup, the Heavenly Sovereign augustly sang, saying:
“Oh this crab! whence this crab? [It is] a crab from far-distant Tsunuga. Whither reaches its sideward motion? [It has] come towards Ichiji-shima and Mi-shima. It must be because, plunging and breathless like the grebe, I went without stopping along the up and down road by the wavelets, that the maiden I met on the Kohata road has a back oh! like a small shield, a row of teeth like acorns. Oh! the earth of the Wani pass at Ichihiwi! Owing to the skin of the first earth being ruddy, to the last earth being of a reddish black, she, without exposing to the actual sun that makes one bend one’s head the middle earth like three chestnuts, draws thickly down her drawn eye-brows;—the woman I met, the child I saw and wanted in this way, the I child I saw and wanted in that way, oh! she is opposite to me at the height of the feast! oh! she is at my side!”[2]
- ↑ Motowori supposes with apparent reason that the character 命, “Augustness,” has only crept into the text through the attraction of the following character 令, “made,” which it resembles in appearance.
- ↑ It must be understood that in this Song the Imperial singer commences by referring to what doubtless formed part of the feast,—a crab,—and thence passes on by an imperceptible transition to allude to his own adventure with the maiden. As the crab when alive walked sideways, so was the Emperor zigzagging up and down the road that lines the shore of Lake Biwa, pursuing his breathless course like that of the busy grebe that perpetually plunges into the water, when the maiden met him near Kohata. Beautiful indeed was she: her back straight as a shield, her teeth like a row of acorns, and the artificial eye-brows painted a dark colour on her forehead drawn low down in a perfect crescent-shape. She had been careful in selecting the clay to make the paint, rejecting the upper layer of earth,
