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Rh rascal. Please do not kill me!" But he was forthwith flung into the river. Afterwards the two men went home to their master's house.

Afterwards the rascal put on the blind old man's beautiful clothes. Then he went to the chief's house and said: "My appearance of misbehaviour was not real. The goddess who lives in the river was very much in love with me. So she wanted to take and marry my spirit after I should have been killed by being thrown into the river. So my misdeeds are all her doing. Though I went to that goddess, I felt unworthy to become her husband, because I am a poor man. I have arranged so that you, who are the chief of the village, should go and have her, and I have come to tell you so. That being so, I am in these beautiful clothes because I come from the goddess." Thus he spoke. As the chief of the village saw that the rascal was dressed in nothing but the best clothes, and thought that he was speaking the truth, he said: "It will be well for me to be tied up in a mat, and flung into the river," Therefore this was done, just as had been done with the rascal, and he was drowned in the water.

After that, the rascal became the chief, and dwelt in the drowned chief's house. Thus very bad men lived in ancient times also. So it is said.—(Translated literally. Told by Ishanashte, 18th July, 1886.)

xliii—Yoshitsune.

[It has been generally believed, both by Japanese and Europeans who have written about the Ainos, that the latter worship Yoshitsune, a Japanese hero of the twelfth century, who is said,—not, indeed, by Japanese historians, but by Japanese tradition,—to have fled to Yezo when the star of his fortune had set. The following details concerning Yoshitsune bear so completely the stamp of the myth, that they may, perhaps, be allowed a place in this collection. It should be mentioned that Yoshitsune is known to the Ainos under the name of Hongai Sama. Sama is the Japanese for "Mr." or "Lord." Hongai is the form in which, according to a regular law of permutation affecting words adopted into Aino from Japanese, the word Hōgwan, which was Yoshitsune's official title, appears! The