and pulling out the nipples of her breasts, pushing down her skirt-string usque ad privates partes.[1] Then the Plain of High Heaven shook, and the eight hundred myriad deities laughed together.
Hereupon the Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity was greatly amazed, and, slightly opening the door of the Heavenly Rock-Dwelling, spoke thus from the inside: "Methought that owing to my retirement the Plain of Heaven would be dark, and likewise the Central Land of Reed-Plains would all be dark: how then is it that the Heavenly-Alarming-Female makes merry, and that likewise the eight hundred myriad deities all laugh?" Then the Heavenly-Alarming-Female spoke, saying: "We rejoice and are glad because there is a deity more illustrious than Thine Augustness." While she was thus speaking, His Augustness Heavenly-Beckoning-Ancestor-Lord and His Augustness Grand-Jewel pushed forward the mirror and respectfully showed it to the Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity, whereupon the Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity, more and more astonished, gradually came forth from the door and gazed upon it, whereupon the Heavenly-Hand-Strength-Male deity, who was standing hidden, took her august hand and drew her out, and then His Augustness Grand-Jewel drew the bottom-tied rope[2] along at her august back, and spoke, saying: "Thou must not go back further in than this"! So when the Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity had come forth, both the Plain of High
- ↑ The subject of the verb is not clear in many of the clauses of this immensely long sentence, which does not properly hang together. Some clauses read as if the different deities who take a part in the action did so of their own free will; but the intention of the author must have been to let a causative sense be understood throughout, as he begins by telling us that a plan was devised by the deity Thought-Includer, which plan must have influenced all the subsequent details.
- ↑ Shiri-kume-naha, i.e., rope made of straw drawn up by the roots, which stick out from the end of the rope. Straw-ropes thus manufactured are still used in certain ceremonies and are called shime-naha, a corruption of the Archaic term.
word for word) is absolutely explicit, but the imitation and not the reality of divine possession appears to be here intended. In the parallel passage of the "Chronicles," on the other hand, we seem to be reading of genuine possession.
