Tunc Hera Miyazu augusto cantui respondit, dicens:
“Altè resplendentis solis anguste puer! Placidè administrationem faciens mî magne domine! Renovatis annis venientibus et effluentibus, renovatæ lunæ eunt veniendo et effluendo. Sane, sane, dum te impatienter exspecto, luna suâpte surgit in orâ veli quod ego induo!”[1]
Quare tunc [ille] coivit [cum illâ], after which, placing in Princess Miyazu’s house his august sword “the Grass-Quelling Sabre,” he went forth[2] to take the Deity of [Mount] Ibuki.[3]
[Sect. LXXXVIII.—Emperor Kei-kō (Part XIII.—Yamato-take Meets the Deity of Mount Ibuki).]
Hereupon he said: “As for the Deity of this mountain, I will
- ↑ The total sense of this Song is quite plain.—In the first lines of it the Prince is addressed as if he were the reigning sovereign. The words placidè administrationem faciens represent the Japanese yasumishishi, the Pillow-Word for wa ga oho-kimi, “my great lord.” Elsewhere the English rendering “who tranquilly carries on the government” has been adopted. The word aratama no, rendered by the Adjective renovatis, is the Pillow-Word for “sun,” “moon” and “year,” and is of not quite certain import. The interpretation here adopted has, however, for it the weight of probability and of native authority, Mabuchi in his “Dictionary of Pillow-Words” deriving it from the Verb aratamaru, “to be renewed.”
- ↑ The characters in the text might also be rendered “he made a progress,” as they are those only properly applied to the movements of a reigning sovereign. Here and elsewhere, however, they are used in speaking of Yamato-take. (Conf. Sect. LXXX, Note 5.)
- ↑ On the frontier of Afumi (Ōmi) and Mino. Ibuki seems to signify “blowing,” in allusion, it is said, to the pestilential breath or influence of the god by whom the place was tenanted. The word rendered “Mount” is supplied by the editor of 1687.
to denote not a dead, but a living trunk, or rather the stem of some delicate plant or grass which falls beneath the sickle of the mower on Mount Kagu in Heaven, or, as it may better be understood, on the Heavenly Mount Kagu [in Yamato]. “Gourd-shaped” is the translation of hisa-kata no or hisa-gata no, the Pillow-Word for “heaven.” Its meaning is disputed, but Mabuchi in his “Dictionary of Pillow-Words” and Motowori agree in giving to it the sense here adopted (see the above-mentioned paper “On the Use of Pillow-Words, etc.,” p. 81).
