husband berries of the muku tree and red earth, he chewed the berries to pieces, and spat them out with the red earth which he held in his mouth, so that the great deity believed him to be chewing up and spitting out the centipedes, and, feeling fond of him in his heart, fell asleep. Then the deity Great-Name-Possessor, grasping the great deity's hair, tied it fast to the various rafters of the house, and, blocking up the floor of the house with a five-hundred draught rock,[1] and taking his wife the Forward-Princess on his back, then carried off the great deity's great life-sword[2] and life-bow-and-arrows, as also his heavenly speaking-lute, and ran out. But the heavenly speaking-lute brushed against a tree, and the earth resounded. So the great deity, who was sleeping, started at the sound, and pulled down the house. But while he was disentangling his hair which was tied to the rafters, the deity Great-Name-Possessor fled a long way. So then, pursuing after him to the Even-Pass-of-Hades, and gazing on him from afar, he called out to the deity Great-Name-Possessor, saying: "With the great life-sword and the life-bow-and-arrows which thou carriest, pursue thy half-brethren till they crouch on the august slopes of the passes, and pursue them till they are swept into the reaches of the rivers, and do thou, wretch! become the deity Master-of-the-Great-Land;[3] and moreover, becoming the deity Spirit-of-the-Living-Land, and making my daughter the Forward-Princess thy consort,[4] do thou make stout the temple-pillars at the foot of Mount Uka in the nethermost rock-bottom, and make high the crossbeams to the Plain-of-High-Heaven, and dwell there, thou villain!"[5] So when, bearing the great sword and bow, he
- ↑ I.e., "a rock which it would require five hundred men to lift."
- ↑ Iku-tachi, supposed by Motowori to be "a sword having the virtue of conferring long life upon its possessor."
- ↑ Thus according to this legend, "Master-of-the Great-Land" (Oho-kuni-nushi) was not the original name of the deity commonly designated by it, and his sovereignty over the Land of the Living (whence the appropriateness of the second name in this context) was derived by investiture from the god of the Land of the Dead.
- ↑ The characters which are here used designate specifically the chief or legitimate wife, as opposed to the lesser wives or concubines.
- ↑ I.e., "Firmly planting in the rock the pillars forming the founda-
