Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/354

244 in regard to plants could be given; Japanese literature teems with them, for flowers are bound up in the lives and affections of every one, and even peasants make poems, or quote them. Here is an example: Prince Ota Dokwan, hunting in the mountains with his suite, was overtaken by driving rain. He stopped at a wayside inn to ask for the loan of one of the straw rain-coats the Japanese wear. The girl of whom the request was made went off, and returned greatly embarrassed without the coat and without an explanation, but with a Yamabuki blossom (a kind of yellow Rose) on her outstretched fan. The Prince was furious, and started away in a tremendous rage, when one of his followers interpreted the poor girl’s action by quoting the verse by which her behaviour, a subtle apology, was prompted—

which by a play upon words really means, “The mountain flower herself has no rain-coat.”