Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/231

 into wrong roads, and terrifying children and old women in sundry ways. The house of a farmer in the province of Awa recently became the beast's playground. A kitchen knife moved automatically from peg to block, and the fish-kettle was found to contain only boiling water when meal-time arrived. One day a rustic presented himself as the servant of a man to whom the farmer owed money, and demanded payment in his master's name. The farmer handed over three pieces of silver. After a time the creditor himself came and asked for his money. Then, of course, the farmer knew that he had been tricked by a badger. Presently the tail of the farm-horse was shorn off by invisible agency, and the horse itself, escaping from the stable, took refuge in a neighbouring village. The farmer led it back, locked it in, and locked the badger out; but again the horse absconded, and on searching its stall, the farmer found the three pieces of silver that had been carried off by the pseudo-servant. In such rôles the badger thrusts himself upon the stage of human existence.

The badger's sphere of influence is occasionally invaded by the kama-itachi (sickle-imp), a nondescript demon which sometimes cuts tresses from women's hair as they walk in unfrequented places, and often inflicts bleeding wounds on people's legs and arms without any visible exercise of effort. The kama-itachi's performances are vaguely connected with a sudden solution of