—reaching agreement, however, only upon the fact that none of them had ever before seen anything like it.
Finally one local wise man stepped forth and proclaimed, “Upon counting the radiating bamboo ribs, there are exactly forty. The paper too is round and luminous, and not of the ordinary kind. Though I hesitate to utter that August Name, this is without a doubt the God of the Sun,[1] whose name we have so often heard, and is assuredly his divine attribute from the Inner Sanctuary of the Great Shrine of Ise, which has deigned to fly to us here!”
All present were filled with awe. Hurriedly the salt water of purification was scattered about the ground and the divinity installed upon a clean reed mat; and the whole population of the village went up into the mountains and, gathering wood and rushes, built a shrine that the deity’s spirit might be transferred hence from Ise. When they had paid reverence to it, the divine spirit did indeed enter the umbrella.
At the time of the summer rains the site upon which the shrine was situated became greatly agitated, and the commotion did not cease. When the umbrella was consulted, the following oracle was delivered: “All this summer the sacred hearth has been simply filthy, with cockroaches boiled in the holy vessels and the contamination reaching even to my Inner Shrine! Henceforth, in this entire province, let there not be a single cockroach left alive! I also have one other request. I desire you to select a beautiful young maiden as a consolation offering for me. If this is not done within seven days, without fail, I will cause the rain to fall in great torrents; I will rain you all to death, so that the seed of man remains no more upon the earth!”
Thus spake the oracle.
The villagers were frightened out of their wits. They held a meeting, and summoned all the maidens of the village to decide which one should serve the deity. But the young maidens, weeping and wailing, strongly protested the umbrella-god’s cruel demand. When asked the reason for their excess of grief, they cried, “How could we
- ↑ The deity of the sun was normally a goddess, but about this time popular belief had him a god.
