Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/396

Rh signifies "pine-insect"; but, as pronounced, it might mean also "waiting-insect,"—since the verb "matsu", "to wait", and the noun "matsu", "pine", have the same sound. It is chiefly upon this double meaning of the word as uttered that a host of Japanese poems about the matsumushi are based. Some of these are very old,—dating back to the tenth century at least.

Although by no means a rare insect, the matsumushi is much esteemed for the peculiar clearness and sweetness of its notes—(onomatopoetically rendered in Japanese by the syllables chin-chirorin, chin-chirorin),—little silvery shrillings which I can best describe as resembling the sound of an electric bell heard from a distance. The matsumushi haunts pine-woods and crypomeria-groves, and makes its music at night. It is a very small insect, with a dark-brown back, and a yellowish belly.

Perhaps the oldest extant verses upon the matsumushi are those contained in the Kokinshū,—a famous anthology compiled in the year 905 by the court-poet Tsurayuki and several of his noble friends. Here we first find that play on the name of the insect as pronounced, which was to be repeated in a thousand 註