he had entered the moor, at once set fire to the moor all round. Thereupon, while he [stood] knowing no place of exit, a mouse[1] came and said: “The inside is hollow-hollow; the outside is narrow-narrow.”[2] Owing to its speaking thus, he trod on the place, whereupon he fell in and hid himself, during which time the fire burnt past. Then the mouse brought out in its mouth and presented to him the whizzing barb. The feathers of the arrow were brought in their mouths by all the mouse’s children. Hereupon his wife the Forward-Princess came bearing mourning-implements,[3] and crying. Her father the great Deity, thinking that [the Deity-Great-Name-Possessor] was already dead and done for, went out and stood on the moor, whereupon [the Deity Great-Name-Possessor] brought the arrow and presented it to him, upon which [the Great Deity], taking him into the house and calling him into an eight-foot spaced large room,[4] made him take the lice off his head. So, on looking at the head, [he saw that] there were many centipedes [there]. Thereupon, as his wife gave to her husband berries of the muku tree[5] and red earth, he chewed the berries to pieces, and spat them out with the red earth which he held in his month, so that the Great Deity believed him to be chewing up and spitting out the centipedes, and, feeling fond [of him] in his heart, fell asleep. Then [the Deity Great-Name-Possessor], grasping the Great Deity’s hair, tied it fast to the various rafters of the house, and, blocking up the floor of the house with a five hundred draught rock,[6] and taking his wife the Forward-
- ↑ Or “rat.”
- ↑ The translator cannot think of any better English equivalents for the child like onomatopœias hora-hora and subu-subu of the Japanese original.
- ↑ The edition of 1687 reads the two characters 喪貝 (here translated “mourning implements,”) mo-gari no sonahe, i.e., “preparations for the funeral.” Such preparations are detailed in the latter part of Sect. XXXI.
- ↑ This is Mabuchi’s interpretation, as quoted by Motowori, of the expression ya-ta-ma no oho-muro-ya. Motowori’s own view is that ya-ta stands for ya-tsu, which would give us in English “an eight-spaced large room.” The character 間, “space” has been in later times used as a measure of length (six Japanese feet). Altogether the precise meaning of the expression is not quite clear, but the general sense is a “large spacious room.”
- ↑ Aphananthe Aspera, also sometimes called Celtis Muku.
- ↑ I.e., “a rock which it would require five hundred men to lift.”
