Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/347

Rh borrowed from the actual functionaries of the court. By a curious coincidence, the Smith-God attached to her train, like the Cyclops of Greek myth, has but one eye.

The duties of the Imbe were in Kojiki and Nihongi times confined to assisting the Nakatomi in the performance of the Shinto religious services. But the following notice by a Chinese traveller gives us a glimpse of them many centuries before. It shows them in their true character, and explains the name Imbe, which means literally "abstainer." "They (the Japanese) appoint a man whom they call an 'abstainer.' He is not allowed to comb his hair, to wash, to eat flesh, or to approach women. When they are fortunate, they make him presents, but if they are ill, or meet with disaster, they set it down to the abstainer's failure to keep his vows, and unite to put him to death." Almost every word of this description is applicable to the medicine-men of the North American Indians at the present day.

Ame no Uzume, the Dread Female of Heaven, who danced and gave forth an inspired utterance before the Rock-cave where the Sun-Goddess was hidden, is also a recognisable personage with whom Mme. Blavatsky might have claimed relationship. She was the ancestor of the Sarume (monkey-women) or female mimes attached to the Mikado's court, whose performances were the origin of the pantomimic religious dances still kept up in Japan and known as Kagura, while her divinely inspired utterance is the prototype of the revelations of the Miko, or Shinto priestesses.

One version of the story gives us the actual words used by Uzume on this occasion, viz.: hi, fu, mi, yo, itsu, mu, nana, ya, kokono, tari. A Japanese baby knows that these are simply the numerals from one to ten. But they have given much trouble to later Shintoists, who have endeavoured to read into them a deep mythical signification. Another account states that the repetition of these words, combined