Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/496

 the Japanese general, her enforced paramour, and leaped to death with him from the wall of Chin-ju, in the days of the great invasion. Most notable was the Queen of the last King of Pakche, who, upon the approach of the ruthless enemy, led her maids to the top of a beetling precipice and threw herself into the water below rather than suffer indignity at the hands of the conquerors. That is the Nakwhaam, or "Precipice of the Falling Flowers," a name of most poetic beauty.

Tongman, the first woman ruler in Silla, divined, from the fire in the frogs' eyes, that the enemy had crossed the border of her realm. Seo, the faithful wife, followed her husband to Japan on the flying boulder and became a queen there. She wove the magic silk on which the King of Silla sacrificed, and thus brought back the light of heaven to his realm, which, since her departure, had been shrouded in Egyptian darkness. There was also the Korean Judith, who, during the occupation of Pyeng-yang by the Japanese in 1592, brought her brother over the wall at night to smite off the head of her captor, who slept bolt upright at a table with a sword in each hand and with only one eye shut at a time. Even after his head had rolled to the floor, he arose in his place and hurled one of his swords with such tremendous force that it went clean through a massive wooden pillar.

There are stories of women notorious for their wickedness, as, for instance, the Princess of Ang-nang, who married a prince of Yemak and one night went and cut open the head of the big drum which, without touch of mortal hand, always emitted a booming sound when an enemy was approaching. Soon after this messengers came hurrying with the news that the Ang-nang forces were crossing the border, but the King laughed at it, saying that the drum had given no warning. Too late it was found that the drum was destroyed.

A fruitful source of Korean legend is the wisdom shown by magistrates and governors in deciding knotty questions of law. These bear witness to the rich fund of humour in the