Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/345

Rh nuisances in the hall where she was celebrating the solemn festival of first-fruits. The climax to his misdeeds was to flay a piebald colt of Heaven and to fling it into the sacred weaving-hall—where the Sun-Goddess was engaged in weaving the garments of the deities. She was so deeply indignant at this last insult that she entered the Rock-cave of Heaven and left the world to darkness.

Native etymologists derive the name Susa no wo from a verb susamu, to be eager, impetuous. Hence the "Impetuous Male" of English translators. I am persuaded, however, that this is only a folk's etymology (which may have suggested some features of the myth) and that the real meaning is the "Male of Susa," Susa being a town in the province of Idzumo, a prehistoric centre of Shinto worship. The name Idzumo, if I am not mistaken, means "sacred quarter."

It would be a mistake to pass over Susa no wo's mischievous and unseemly pranks with a smile as naive inventions of some early writer's fancy. They have a profound significance, and indeed form a tolerably comprehensive selection from the so-called "celestial offences" enumerated in the Great Purification Liturgy, a solemn state ceremonial by which the nation was purged of its sins twice a year. To complete the account of the rudimentary moral code of this period, I may add the earthly offences, viz.:—the cutting of living bodies, the cutting of dead bodies, leprosy, incest (within very narrow limits of relationship) calamities from creeping things, from the high gods, and from high birds, killing of cattle, and bewitchment.

Susa no wo's re-sowing of his sister's rice-fields reminds us of the wild-oats sown by Loki, the mischief-maker of Scandinavian myth.

The retirement of the Sun-Goddess to the Rock-cave of Heaven produced great consternation among the heavenly deities. They met on the dry bed of the River of Heaven and took counsel how they should entice her from her