Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/391

 god had sneezed ! Why had he not thought of this contingency. He fell into the thick bushes and lost consciousness, but recovered later, only to find, to his joy, that the same cataclysm which had hurled him down had also dislodged the pear, which lay at his feet. He took it to Seoul, and by its help reached that Mecca of all Koreans, official position.

But besides the genuine relics that may be found in Korea, there are a host of others that exist in the imagination of the people and exercise a powerful influence upon their thought. For instance, there is the jade flute, which is supposed to be kept at Kyong-ju in the archives of ancient Silla, and which cannot be played upon if it is taken to any other place. So firmly do the Koreans believe in this flute that they say the late regent had it brought up to Seoul, and that the present Emperor, when a boy, accidentally broke it. The regent is said to have mended it with a silver band. It is thus that the Koreans weave about the most impossible tales a web of circumstance, giving them a certain verisimilitude that might easily deceive the uninitiated. There is also the celebrated medicine stone in Pochun, which was once polished as smooth as glass, and if anyone looked into this as into a mirror he would discover from what disease he was suffering. The Koreans firmly believe that somewhere in one of the old palaces in Seoul there lie three hundred dried-up skins of Japanese unmarried females. These, they say, were exacted as an indemnity from the Japanese at the end of the great invasion of 1592. The story is that the Japanese were compelled to agree to send this number every year, but that after the first year the Koreans out of pity remitted the tribute. There is about as much sense in this statement as there is in the claim put forth by the Japanese that Korea ever paid tribute to that kingdom. It looks as if the story of these skins was invented as an offset to the fact that the Japanese sent thousands of Korean noses and ears to Japan during the days of that invasion. The falsity of the Korean story does them more credit than the truth of the Japanese story does the Japanese.