[Sect. XLII.—The Parturition-House of Cormorants’ Feathers.]
Hereupon the Sea-Deity’s daughter Her Augustness Luxuriant-Jewel-Princess herself waited on[1] [His Augustness Fire-Subside], and said: “I[2] am already with child, and the time for my delivery now approaches. But methought that the august child of an Heavenly Deity[3] ought not to be born in the Sea-Plain.[4] So I have waited on thee here.”[5] Then forthwith on the limit of the waves upon the sea-shore she built a parturition-hall,[6] using cormorants’ feathers for thatch. Hereupon, before the thatch was completed,[7] she was unable to restrain the urgency of her august womb. So she entered the parturition-hall. Then, when she was about to be delivered, she spoke to her husband[8] [,saying]: “Whenever a foreigner is about to be delivered, she takes the shape of her native land to be delivered.[9] So I now will take my native
- ↑ For “waited on” see Sect. XXXVIII, Note 1. The word “herself” (自 midzukara) has no particular force or meaning in the Japanese original, where it is simply placed in imitation of the Chinese style.
- ↑ See Sect. XXXVIII. Note 2.
- ↑ Or “of the Heavenly Deity,” i.e., “thyself.” But it seems better to understand the speaker to intimate that it would be unfitting for one who properly belonged to Heaven to be born in the sea, which was another country or kingdom.
- ↑ I.e., in the sea.
- ↑ Literally, “come out and arrived.”
- ↑ It has been noticed in the Introduction, p. xxviii, that in early Japan a parturient woman was expected to build for herself a special hut in which to give birth to her child.
- ↑ Or, completely put on; literally, “thatched [so as] to meet.”
- ↑ The text here has 日子, “prince,” literally “sun-child,” and so the older editors understood the expression. The translator, however, prefers Motowori’s view, according to which the character 遲 should be supplied, and the whole read phonetically as hikoji, “husband,” a word which occurs again a few lines further on.
- ↑ I.e., she assumes the shape proper to her in her native land.
younger brother, after the latter had saved him from drowning. “One account” in the “Chronicles” relates these antics at full, telling us that they represented the straits to which he was put as the waters gradually rose higher and higher; and we learn from other passages in the same work and in the “Chronicles of Japan Continued” that the Hayabito did really down to historical times combine the office of Court Jesters with that of Imperial Guardsmen.
