and, intending to wait for and attack thee, has [tried to] collect an army; but, being unable to collect it, he has built a great palace, and set[1] a gin within it, intending to wait for and catch thee. So I have come out to inform [thee of this].” Then the two persons His Augustness Michi-no-Omi,[2] ancestor of the Ohotomo Chieftains,[3] and His Augustness Ohokume,[4] ancestor of the Kume Lords,[5] summoned Ukashi the Elder Brother and reviled him, saying: “Into the great palace which thou[6] hast built to respectfully serve [His Augustness Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko], be thou[7] the first to enter, and declare plainly the manner in which thou intendest respectfully to serve him;”—and forthwith grasping the hilts of their cross-swords, playing with their spears,[8] and fixing arrows [in their bows], they drove him in, whereupon he was caught in[9] the gin which he himself had set, and died. So they forthwith pulled him out, and cut him in pieces. So the place is called Uda-no-Chihara.[10] Having done thus, [His Augustness Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko] bestowed on his august army the whole of the great banquet presented [to him] by Ukashi the Younger Brother. At this time he sang, saying:
- ↑ Literally, “spread.” This gin is supposed to have been of the kind whose top closes down after the man or animal has fallen into it.
- ↑ I.e., “Grandee of the Way.” This gentile name is said in the “Chronicles” to have been bestowed on this worthy in consideration of his services as a guide to his master the Emperor on the occasion of the latter’s progress eastward.
- ↑ See Sect. XXXIV, Note 12.
- ↑ I.e., perhaps “Great Round Eyes,” supposed be a descendant of His Augustness Ama-tsu-kume (see however Sect. XXXIV, Note 7 for a discussion of the etymology of Kume).
- ↑ See Sect. XXXIV, Note 13.
- ↑ The expression i ga, here rendered “thou,” is, as Motowori remarks, “extremely hard to understand,” and its interpretation as an insulting form of the Second Personal Pronoun is merely tentative. Perhaps the text is corrupt.
- ↑ The insulting Second Personal Pronoun ore is here employed.
- ↑ Here again we have an expression written phonetically and of uncertain import. The translator has followed Motowori in tentatively rendering it according to the ideographic reading of the parallel passage of the “Chronicles.”
- ↑ Literally “struck by.”
- ↑ I.e. Uda’s Blood-Plain.
