Page:Child-life in Japan and Japanese child stories (Ayrton, Matilida Chaplin. , 1901).djvu/43

Rh coloring. His pouch of purple had a dragon worked on it, and the hair of his partly shaven head was tied into a little gummed tail with white paper-string. They spent most of the day playing with their pretty new battledores, striking with its plain side the airy little shuttlecock whose head is made of a black seed. All the while they sang a rhyme on the numbers up to ten:—

When tired of this fun, they would play with a ball made of paper and wadding evenly wound about with thread or silk of various colors. They sang to the throws a song which seems abrupt because some portions have probably fallen into disuse; it runs thus:—

"See opposite—see Shin-kawa! A very beautiful lady who is one of the daughters of a chief magistrate of Odawara-cho. She was married to a salt merchant. He was a man fond of display, and he thought how he would dress her this year. He said to the dyer, 'Please dye this brocade and the brocade for the middle dress into seven- or eight-fold dresses;' and the dyer said, I am a dyer, and therefore I will dye and stretch it. What pattern do you wish? 'The merchant replied, 'The pattern of falling snow and broken twigs, and in the centre the curved bridge of Gojo.'"