Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/271

 Hisamatsu were lovers whose names have been handed down in story. Lost children are sought by a man carrying a cloth measure in his girdle on the left side, or by a woman carrying the same object on the right, and when the ideograph for "dog" is traced with the ring-finger on the forehead of a child taken out at night, the little one is safe against attacks from foxes, badgers, or rats.

It will readily be inferred that many superstitions are connected with love affairs. If one's night-robe is worn inside out, the object of one's affections will surely visit one in a dream; and a meeting with a lover is foreshadowed by the loosening of an undergarment's string, or by a sudden sneeze, or by irritation on the eyebrow or inside the ear, or by the stumbling of a horse, or by the appearance of a spider. An ink-stain on the sleeve indicates that one is loved, and curling hair, that one loves. On the other hand, the pain of unfaithfulness may be assuaged by tying rushes around the body or by keeping a shell of the wasure-gai (clam of forgetfulness) in one's pocket. If the bone of a dove that cooed on the 5th of the 5th month is placed in a red bag and carried on the person, conjugal affection is maintained. A wife may be cured of jealousy by making her eat the broiled flesh of a bush-warbler, or swallow pills made of red millet and the fruit of Job's tears; and her fidelity to her marriage vow may be tested by hiding in some part of her garments earth taken from the hoof of a horse