but had no means of crossing over. For this reason I deceived the crocodiles[1] of the sea, saying: ‘Let you and me compete, and compute the numbers of our [respective] tribes. So do you go and fetch every member of your tribe, and make them all lie in a row across from this island to Cape Keta. Then I will tread on them, and count them as I run across. Hereby shall we know whether it or my tribe is the larger.’ Upon my speaking thus, they were deceived and lay down in a row, and I trod on them and counted them as I came across, and was just about to get on land, when I said: ‘You have been deceived by me.’ As soon as I had finished speaking, the crocodile who lay the last of all seized me and stripped off all my clothing. As I was weeping and lamenting for this reason, the eighty Deities who went by before [thee] commanded and exhorted me, saying: ‘Bathe in the salt water, and lie down exposed to the wind.’ So, on my doing as they had instructed me, my whole body was hurt.” Thereupon the Deity Great-Name-Possessor instructed the hare, saying: “Go quickly now to the river-mouth, wash thy body with the fresh water, then take the pollen of the sedges [growing] at the river-mouth, spread it about, and roll about upon it, whereupon thy body will certainly be restored to its original state.”[2] So [the hare] did as it was instructed, and its body became as it had been originally. This was the White Hare of Inaba.[3] It is now called the Hare Deity. So the hare said to the Deity Great-Name-Possesser: “These eighty Deities shall certainly not get the Princess of Yakami. Though thou bearest the bag, Thine Augustness shall obtain her.”
[Sect. XXII.—Mount Tema.]
Thereupon the Princess of Yakami answered[4] the eighty Deities, saying: “I will not listen to your words. I mean to marry the
- ↑ See Translator’s Introduction, p. xxxiii, Note 41.
- ↑ Literally “to its original skin”; that is to say that its skin would again be covered with fur.
- ↑ Motowori and Moribe agree in considering that the word “white” means “bare” in this place, and the latter in his Critique of the former’s Commentary quotes examples which show that their view is probably correct.
- ↑ It must be understood that in the meantime they had arrived at her dwelling and begun to court her.
