222
“Ko-ji-ki,” or Records of Ancient Matters.
[Vol. XXIX.
Again when they entered the salt sea,[1] and suffered as they went, they sang, saying:
“As we go through the sea, our loins are impeded,—tottering in the sea like herbs growing in a great river-bed.”[2]
Again when [the bird] flew and perched on the seaside, they sang, saying:
“The dotterel of the beach goes not on the beach, but follows the seaside.”[3]
These four Songs were all sung at [Yamato-take’s] august interment. So to the present day these Songs are sung at the great august interment of a Heavenly Sovereign. So [the bird], flew off from that country,[4] and stopped at Shiki in the land of Kafuchi.[5] So they made an august mausoleum there, and laid [Yamato-take] to rest.[6] Forth-
- ↑ When the bird flew over the sea, they too waded after it through the waves.
- ↑ The signification of the Song is: “As we pursue thee through the sea, we sink in the waves up to our middles, and totter like the water-plants against which strikes the current of a great river.”—The word uwe-gusa, lit. “herbs planted,” is curious; but it simply means “herbs growing,” as in the translation (conf. our word “plant”). The latter part of the poem is in the original highly elliptical.
- ↑ The point of this Song seems to rest on a delicate distinction between the words hama, “beach” and iso, “seaside,” which does not obtain in the later Japanese language any more than it does in English. Both hama and iso, “beach” and “seaside,” denote the boundary-line between sea and land; but wo must suppose with the commentators that, while the former was used with special reference to the land, the latter considered the idea (so to speak) from the point of view of the sea. The import of the Song is therefore to upbraid the bird for flying over the waves instead of flying along the adjacent shore.
- ↑ I.e., says Motowori, from Ise.
- ↑ Not to be confounded with the Shiki in Yamato, which is written with different phonetic characters.
- ↑ The Verb used in the original is shidzumeru, “to repress,” “to quiet,” “to lay,” “to establish,” hence “to build a temple to a god,” “to worship.” The grammatical vagueness of the Japanese language helps in all this passage to preserve the connection of ideas in a manner which it is difficult to render in an English translation. Using no pronouns, it does not require to specialise in each instance whether it is the bird that is meant, or Yamato-take, but the two are confounded together in language as they were in thought.
