Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/431

 ii s. in. JUNE 3, ML] NOTES AND QUERIES.

425

said he, ' several stalwart fellows came and earnestly a^ked me immediately to visit their master, who was, they said, very ill of a boil. I complied with their request, and followed them with my medicines and apparatus, and found a palanquin awaiting me. No sooner had I entered it than the doer was tightly closed, and thus I was carried some three Japanese miles in a mys- terious roundabout way. On arrival at our des- tination, they took me out of the palanquin and conducted me before what appeared to be a chief of bandits, who was groaning with grievous wounds. His men forced me to remain in the house for twenty and odd days, not allowing me any glimpse whatever of its outside. When his wounds healed through my treatment, he thanked me and gave me a present of five gold pieces ; and placing me in the palanquin again, he caused me to be brought back mazily to the same place as before.'

" When the surgeon ended he was asked by Shigemune whether he had not noticed anything particular in that place during his stay of more than a score days. He answered that only a certain bird's note had attracted his attention, and subsequently he had overheard somebody saying ' This is the bird calle*Bupp6s6 in imita- tion of its characteristic voice ; it lives in, only two mountains, Nikk6 and Koya, in the whole empire.' Scarcely had Shigemune got this answer before he reminded himself of an old poem by Shunzei [a wise poet of the twelfth century A.D.] indicating Mount Matsuo as the only locality near Kyoto inhabited by this bird. So he sent a police force there and succeeded in capturing and punishing all those culprits." ' Ooka Tadasuke Itoku,' written in the eighteenth century (?), quoted in Nishi/awa, ' Denki Sakusho,' c. 1840-52, ed. 1906, Series I. torn. i. p. 10.

Santo Kyoden, a renowned Japanese romancer, in his ' Udonge Monogatari,' 1804, chap, x., has a variant of this tale, wherein he makes a brigand chief to be en- tirely cured of hemeralopia through the advice of a quack, whom his subjects had brought blindfolded to his den. Thankful for this, the company entertains the quack with drink one evening, promising to send him home as soon as the wine is finished. While drinking, however, he listens to a sin- gular bird's cry, declares it to be the Bupposo, and plumes himself upon his knowledge of what mountain he is now on this bird having its abode limited to very few moun- tains in all the Japanese provinces. The brigand chief, drawing the quack near him- self under pretence of giving him a present, suddenly strikes off his head in order to prevent him from divulging the whereabouts of the marauders. For an illustrated de- scription of the bird Bupposo see Kayahara, ' Boso Manroku,' 1829, chap. iii.

Saikwaku's ' Honcho Ooinhiji,' 1689, torn. iv. chap, ix., contains also a narrative similar to the story of Itakura quoted above, but in it the judge is made to elicit the hiding-

place of a band of murderers, not from the bird's cry, but from music and the bustle of a crowd that the surgeon reports to have heard near their dwelling on two different i occasions KTJMAGTJSU MINAKATA.

Tanabe, Kii, Japan.

BLUE ROD. The following addition to

"Rod" titles, taken from The Times of

6 May, should, I think, find a place in ' N. & Q.' :

GENTLEMAN USHER OF THE BLUE ROD.

(From the London Gazette. )

Chancery of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, Downing street, May 5, 1911.

The King, as Sovereign and Chief of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, has been pleased to direct that the Officer of Arms of the said Most Distinguished Order (Sir William Alexander Baillie Hamilton, K.C.M.G., C.B.) shall be styled Gentleman Usher of the Blue Rod.

The other like titles existing heretofore are, I believe :

1. Usher of the Black Rod Order of the Garter.

2. Gentleman Usher of the Green Rod Order of the Thistle.

3. Usher of the Black Rod (Ireland) Order of St. Patrick.

4. Gentleman Usher of the Scarlet Rod Order of the Bath.

Presumably the above-quoted warrant is intended to mean that every holder of the office referred to shall hereafter be styled " Gentleman Usher of the Blue Rod." If that is the intention, there is an interest- ing lack of precision.

I am not sure whether the English and Irish " Black Rods " ought to be styled respectively " Usher of the Black Rod " or " Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod." In John Chamberlayne's ' Magnae Britannise Notitia ; or, The Present State of Great Britain,' 1708, p. 609, Sir David Mitchel, Kt., is at the head of the " Gentleman Ushers, Daily Waiters," and is called " Gentleman Usher, Daily Waiter, and Black Rod." There, however, he appears as one of " The Queen's [Queen Anne's] Officers and Servants in Ordinary above- Stairs, under the Lord Chamberlain." On p. 231, in the account of the Knights of the Garter, the officer (not named) is described as "Usher of the Garter, Usher of the Black Rod."

For an interesting note on Green Rod see 10 S. xii, 377. ROBERT PIERPOINT.