accordance with his august bidding, they waited. Then the eight-forked serpent came, indeed, as had been said, and bending down one head into each of the tubs, lapped up the saké. Hereupon it became drunken, and all the heads lay down to sleep, when straightway Susa no wo drew his ten-span sword from his girdle and slew the serpent, so that the river had its current changed to blood. Now, when he cut the middle part of the tail the edge of his august sword was broken. Wondering at this, he pierced it and split it open, when he found that within there was a great sharp sword. He took this sword, and thinking it a wonderful thing, reported his discovery to the Sun Goddess. This is the great sword Kusanagi (Herb-queller)."
On the occasion of his marriage to Kushinada hime, Susa no wo composed the following verses:—
Many clouds arise,
On all sides a manifold fence:
To receive within it the spouses,
They form a manifold fence,
Ah! that manifold fence!
Eventually he entered the Nether Land.
Few of my readers will require to have pointed out to them the striking resemblance of this story to that of Perseus and Andromeda, or will need to be referred to Mr. Sidney Hartland's 'Legend of Perseus,' in which everything relating to its numerous variants has been so thoroughly examined. I would direct special attention to chapter xviii. of this work, where the hypothesis is offered, "that we have in this incident a reminiscence of the abolition of human sacrifices to deities in the shape of the lower animals...... In certain stages of civilization, sacrifices of the kind are practised, and are frequently offered to water-spirits conceived in animal form...... It may, of course, be that the monster sent to devour Andromeda is to be regarded simply as the personification of water, or of specific rivers in their sinister aspect."[1]
- ↑ See Index—'River-deities.'
