Vol. XIII.]
Vol. I. Sect. XXXI.
97
So this is the origin of the modern proverb which speaks of ‘the pheasant as sole messenger.’[1] So the sound of the wailings of the Heavenly-Young-Prince’s wife Princess Under-Shining, re-echoing in the wind, reached Heaven. So the Heavenly-Young-Prince’s father, the Deity Heaven’s-Earth-Spirit, and his wife and children[2] who were in heaven, hearing it, came down with cries and lamentations, and at once built a mounring-house there,[3] and made the wild goose of the river[4] the head-hanging bearer,[5] the heron the broom-bearer, the kingfisher the person of the august food, the sparrow the pounding-woman,[6] the
- ↑ The import of the proverb seems to be that an embassy should always consist of more than one person. This is Motowori’s view, based on his interpretation of the character 頓 as hita, which he identifies with hito, “one”; and it agrees well with the story in the text. Hirata, who, in his Exposition of the Ancient Histories,” following the version of the legend given in the “Chronicles,” narrates two pheasant embassies,—the male bird being sent first and (as it did not return) the female afterwards,—takes the character in the proper sense belonging to it in Chinese, and interprets the words of the proverb to mean “the pheasant’s hurried embassy.”
- ↑ I.e., the wife and children of the Heavenly-Young-Prince, who had been left behind by him in Heaven when he went on his embassy to Idzumo.
- ↑ I.e., in the place where he died. The “mourning house” was used to keep the corpse in till it was finally buried.
- ↑ Some of the commentators believe this bird to be a separate species, and Moribe, who says that he saw one at the estuary near Kuhana in Ise, describes it as “rather slenderer than an ordinary wild goose, with longer legs and a higher back.” If we accepted this, the better English translation would be “river wild goose.”
- ↑ The original of this expression (kisari-mochi) is very obscure even in the “Chronicles,” by whose ideographic reading the translator has been guided, and being here written phonetically becomes more conjectural still. The most likely opinion is that it signifies one bearing on his head the food to be offered to the corpse, though if this view be adopted, the office of the mourner in question may seem to resemble too closely that of the kingfisher. The latter has however been supposed to have brought fish, while the goose may have brought rice. Another proposal is that the goose brought the food and the kingfisher cooked it, while the sparrow, as mentioned below, performed the intermediate operation of pounding the rice. (See Motowori’s elaborate note on this word in Vol. XIII, pp. 47–48 of his Commentary).
- ↑ Or simply, “the pounder.”
