Vol. XIX.]
Vol. II. Sect. XLIX.
143
“The children of the augustly powerful army will smite and finish the one stem of smelly chive in the millet-field,—the stem of its root, both its root and shoots.”[1]
Again he sang:
“The ginger, which the children of the augustly powerful army planted near the hedge, resounds in the mouth. I shall not forget it. I will smite and finish it.”[2]
Again he sang, saying:
“Like the turbinidæ creeping round the great rock in the sea of Ise [on which blows] the divine wind, [so] will we creep round, and smite and finish them.”[3]
- ↑ The wild chive growing among the millet is of course the enemy, the Prince of Tomi and his host; and the gist of the Song is that the Imperial troops will smite and destroy them root and branch. The commentators suppose the simile to have been taken from the fields of millet which Jim-mu’s troops planted for their subsistence during the long drawn out campaigns of early days.—The “stem of its root,” so ne ga moto, is a curious expression, which is perhaps best accounted for by Moribe’s supposition that we have here a pun on Sune ga moto, “Sune’s house,” Sune being a natural abbreviation of Nagasune, the name of the Prince of Tomi (see Sect. XLIV, Note 28).
- ↑ The sense of this Song is: “I shall not forget the bitterness of seeing my brother slain by Prince Nagasune’s arrow (see the latter part of Sect. XLIV). The word hazhikami, here rendered ginger in accordance with Motowori’s dictum, is taken by Moribe to signify the xanthoxylon. “Resounding in the mouth” is a curious phrase here used to express bitterness.
- ↑ Motowori thus paraphrases this Song: “As the innumerable turbinidæ [-shells] creep round the great rock, so will I with the myriads of the Imperial host encompass the Prince of Tomi on every side, that there may be no outlet whereby he can escape.” The shell here mentioned is a kind of small conch. Kamu-kaze no, lit. “of divine wind,” is the Pillow-Word for Ise, and is of disputed derivation, as is the word Ise itself. The curious reader should refer to Fujihara no Hikomaro’s “Inquiry into the Meaning of the Names of All the Provinces” s.v. for the legend to which the name of Ise and its Pillow-Word were anciently traced and other conjectures on the point. The “great rock” here mentioned is not otherwise known.
