who dwelt in Yamato, all went down[1] and built an august mausoleum, and, forthwith crawling hither and thither in the rice-fields encompassing [the mausoleum], sobbed out a Song, saying:
“The Dioscorea quinqueloba crawling hither and thither among the rice-stubble, among the rice-stubble in the rice-fields encompassing [the mausoleum] ….”[2]
Thereupon [the dead prince], turning into a white dotterel[3] eight fathoms [long], and soaring up to Heaven, flew off towards the shore. Then the Empresses and likewise the august children, though they tore their feet treading on the stubble of the bamboo-grass, forgot the pain, and pursued him with lamentations. At that time they sang, saying:
“Our loins are impeded in the plain [overgrown with] short bamboo-grass. We are not going through the sky, but oh! we are on foot.”[4]
- ↑ Q.d., to the land of Ise.
- ↑ The drift of the Song is a comparison of the helpless wanderings of the mourners in the neighbourhood of the tomb to the convolutions of the Dioscorea quinqueloba (a creeping plant) growing among the rice in the adjacent fields. But there are evidently some lines omitted. If we were to adopt the elegant verses conjecturally supplied by Moribe, the entire translation would run thus: “The Dioscorea quinqueloba crawls hither and thither among the rice-stubble, among the rice-stubble in the rice-fields encompassing [the mausoleum]; but though, like it, we crawl hither and thither and weep and speak to thee, thou answerest not a word.”—Moribe supposes this poem to be the Empress’s composition, and the following three to have proceeded from the children.
- ↑ As usual when the word chidori (defined as “any kind of dotterel, plover or sandpiper”) is used, it is doubtful what bird is really intended. At the end of this Section we are told that the Mausoleum was called the “Mausoleum of the White Bird (白鳥).” Specifically, however, these characters are used with their Sinico-Japanese pronunciation of haku-chō as the name of the swan. But as swans are nowhere else mentioned in these “Records,” and as moreover their habits are not such as to accord with the legend here narrated, it will perhaps be safer to retain “dotterel” in the translation. “Heron” also has been suggested.
- ↑ The signification of this Song is: “It is easy enough for thee, thou bird-spirit! to fly through the air. But remember that we are on foot, and that our feet are getting torn by the short stubble of the bamboo-grass (Bambusa shino.)”
