Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/422

418 of Japan, and also in the country of the gods, at the Great Shrine of Izumo. By the ninety-eight thousand gods of the country and the thirteen thousand Buddhas of the holy places, through the fearful road of the underworld I come. Ah, horror! The spirits of his ancestors crowd upon me, each couple as inseparable as the bow and the arrow. The skies may change and the waters may change, but the bow is unchangeable. One shot from it sends an echo through all the holy places of the temples. Ah! Ah! Oh, joyful sight! Well have you summoned me. I had for a bedfellow a warrior famous with the bow, but alas! averse to a pure diet, in life he devoured fish even to the bones, and now, in punishment, is changed into a devil in the shape of an ox, his duty being to keep the gates of Hell, from which he has no release. Thus have I come alone.”

“Who are you?” asked Yaji. “I don’t understand what it’s all about!”

“I have come for the sake of him who offered me water, the mirror of my body, my child-treasure.”

“Mirror of the body?” said Kita. “I’ll tell you what, Yaji, it’s your mother.”

“My mother, eh?” said Yaji. “I don’t have anything to say to her.”

“Has the mirror of my body nothing to say to me?” continued the witch. “To me, your bedfellow, whom you have thus without shame summoned from the depths? Ah, what agony I went through when I was married to you—time and again suffering the pangs of hunger and shivering with cold in the winter. Ah, hateful! Hateful!”

“Forgive me,” said Yaji. “At that time my fortunes were low. How pitiful your lot that you should have been brought to the grave with care and hardships.”

“Halloa, Yaji,” said Kita. “Are you crying.? Ha, ha, ha! Even devils have tears.”

“I shall never forget it,” the witch went on. “When you were ill you gave your sickness to me. Our only child, who had to carry on our name, grew weak and thin because there was no rice to fill his empty stomach. Every day the bill collectors were knocking at the door and the rent remained unpaid. Yet I did not complain—not even when I slipped in the dogs’ dirt in the lane.”