leaves, [do thou] become green and wither! Again, like unto the flowing and ebbing of this brine,[1] [do thou] flow and ebb! Again, like unto the sinking of these stones, [do thou] sink and be prostrate!” Having caused this curse to be spoken, she placed [the basket] over the smoke.[2] Therefore the elder brother dried up, withered, sickened, and lay prostrate[3] for the space of eight years. So on the elder brother entreating his august parent with lamentations and tears, she forthwith caused the curse to be reversed.[4] Thereupon his body became sound[5] as it had been before. (This is the origin of the term “a divine wager-payment.”[6])
[Sect. CXVII.—Emperor Ō-jin (Part XVI.—Genealogies).]
Again this Heavenly Sovereign Homuda’s[7] august child King Waka-nuke-futa-mata wedded his mother’s younger sister Momo-shiki-iro-be,[8] another name for whom was Her Augustness Oto-hime-ma-waka-hime,[9] and
- ↑ In this case, as Motowori remarks, it is the sea-water that is intended to be spoken of, whereas the allusion in the previous sentence is to hard salt. But the Japanese language uses the same word for both, and the same Chinese character is here also used in both contexts. For this curse conf. Sect. XL (Note 18 et. seq.) and Sect. XLI.
- ↑ Scil. of the furnace (kitchen) in the younger brother’s house, as Motowori suggests.
- ↑ The text has the character 枯, which signifies “to wither” or “dry up” (spoken of trees). But the translator agrees with Motowori in considering it to be in all probability an error for 臥, “to lie prostrate;” and in any case it could not here be rendered by either of the verbs “dry up” or “wither” without introducing into the English version a tautology which does not exist in the Japanese original.
- ↑ Such seems to be the meaning of the obscure original sono tokohi-do wo kahesashimeki (令返其詛戸). Motowori would understand it in a rather more specialized sense to signify that “she caused the implement of the curse (i.e., the basket) to be taken away.”
- ↑ Literally, “was pacified.”
- ↑ Or, if we take 言 in the text as equivalent to 事, “this is the origin of divine wager-payments.”
- ↑ I.e., the Emperor Ō-jin’s.
- ↑ The import of this compound is not clear.
- ↑ I.e., “the younger princess, the truly young princess.”
