Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/199

 raced or trickled below. It seemed as though the spirits of water and wood and fire had suddenly been petrified at the supreme moment of a great triangular battle, and waited, weapon in hand, to spring once more each at his adversary's throat. Evidently the old temple, dedicated to Ho-musubi, the god of fire, and Haniyasu-hime, the goddess of earth, was the citadel, defended and attacked by these weird combatants. Towering cryptomeria stood on guard around it, and huge rocks, tip-toe on tenuous bases, attended the word of command to crush the curving rafters. It needed but one signal from the imprisoned fire-god, one movement of the volcanic earth-goddess, to fill that fantastic glen with the clamour and débris of primæval war. Elsewhere we might have admired the carven serpents, that writhed so realistically about the side-beams of the porch. At Nikkō or the Nishi Hongwanji temple in Kyōto they might have impressed us as masterpieces of creative carpentry, but at Haruna the comparison was too trying. It was hopeless to compete with God's more monstrous curios.

Here at last was a Shintō stronghold which did not seem abandoned and desolate, but bore traces of frequent worshippers. Above the sacred cisterns waved blue towels, suspended after purification; at the feet of a Shintoised Jizō rose a mound of propitiatory stones; on the kagura-dō, or dancing platform, an old woman, the priest's wife, began her symbolic dance. As she slowly revolved, shaking her bunch of bells or waving her fan, she chanted words so venerable that all clue to their meaning had been lost. Yet, in her faded garb and shrunken person she personified more fitly the solemn contortions of a dying faith than the smart