heard stories no doubt…. Believe me, there is no truth in them. I have in the past admired one or two of our simple country girls; but surely you can understand that this would be a very different matter. Should you admit me to the friendship of your exalted kinswoman, I would set her up as my paragon, my empress, my all-in-all….’ He made many fair speeches of this kind. At last the old nurse answered: ‘I should indeed consider my grand-daughter singularly fortunate to have aroused the interest of so distinguished a gentleman as yourself, were it not for the fact that nature has played upon her a cruel trick at birth. … Sir, I have seldom spoken of this to any one before; but I must assure you that the poor girl’s unhappy condition has for years past been a sore trouble tome. As for offering her hand in marriage to any one—that is entirely out of the question….’ ‘Pray don’t make so many apologies,’ cried Tayū. ‘Were she the most blear-eyed, broken-legged creature under Heaven, I’d have her put right for you in a very short while. The truth of the matter is, the Gods and Buddhas in the temples round here owe a good deal to me, and I can make them do pretty much whatever I choose….’ So he bragged; but when, assuming that his offer had already been accepted, he began pressing the old lady to name a day, she hastily changed the subject, saying that summer would soon be coming, that the farmers were needing rain, plying him in fact with all the usual topics of the countryside. He felt that before he left he ought to recite a few verses of poetry, and after a long period of silent meditation, he produced the following:
If she does not want to be married,
I shall go to the pine-tree Bay
And complain to the God of the Mirror;[1]
Then I need hardly say
That I shall get my way.
- ↑ The God of the Sacred Mirror, at Matsura, in Hizen.
