in marriage, but none of them could do so.[1] Hereupon there were two Deities, brothers, of whom the elder was called the Youth-of-the-Glow-on-the-Autumn-Mountains,[2] and the younger was named the Youth-of-the-Haze-on-the-Spring-Mountains.[3] So the elder brother said to the younger brother: “Though I beg for[4] the Maiden of Idzushi, I cannot obtain her in marriage. Wilt thou [be able] to obtain her?” He answered, saying: “I will easily obtain her.” Then the elder brother said: “If thou shalt obtain this maiden, I will take off my upper and lower garments, and distill liquor in a jar of my own height,[5] and prepare all the things of the mountains and of the rivers[6] [,and give them to thee] in payment of the wager.” Then the younger brother told his mother everything that the elder brother had said. Forthwith the mother, having taken wistaria-fibre, wove and sewed in the space of a single night an upper garment and trowsers, and also socks and boots, and likewise made a bow and arrow, and clothed him in this upper garment, trowsers, etc., made him
- ↑ Literally “eight Deities wished to obtain this Maiden-of-Idzushi, but none could wed [her].” But the sense is that given in the translation.
- ↑ Aki-yama no shita-bi-wotoko. The explanation of the name is that given by Motowori (following Mabuchi), who sees in it a reference to the ruddy brilliance of the leaves, which is so marked a feature of the Japanese woods in autumn. The Chinese characters used have, indeed, the signification of the lower ice of the autumn mountains; but “lower ice” may well be simply phonetic in this case.
- ↑ Haru-yama no kasumi-wotoko.
- ↑ In Japanese kohedomo, written with the characters 雖乞. Perhaps Motowori is right in supposing this Verb to have been originally identical with kofuru, “to love”) (戀), whose corresponding form is kofuredomo. If so, the author may have meant to make his hero say, “though I love the maiden, etc.” But it is better to be guided by the characters, and to suppose that he referred to the request made to her mother to grant her to him.
- ↑ Literally, “compute the height of my person and distill liquor in a jar.”
- ↑ I.e., all the valuable produce of the chase and of the fisheries, such as are perpetually mentioned in the Shintō “Rituals” as being presented to the gods. Thus in the “Service of the Goddess of Food” (see Mr. Satow’s translation in Vol. VII, Pt. IV, p. 414 of these “Transactions,”) we read that the worshipper offered: “as to things which dwell in the mountains—things soft of hair and things rough of hair; as to things which grow in the great-field-plain—sweet herbs and bitter herbs; as to things which dwell in the blue-sea-plain—things wide of fin and things narrow of tin, down to weeds of the offing and weeds of the shore.”
