It was on March 20 that she was lost. Because of her passion, they say, the lake rages around that date, even now.
THE SHRINE OF THE VENGEFUL SPIRIT
This legend is a good example of the goryo, the spirit that harbors a curse at the time of its unnatural bodily death and hence must be enshrined. A comparable tradition in Yanagita, Mountain Village Life, pp. 390-94, tells of a refugee warrior in Kita-mura who hid himself in a hollow tree and was betrayed by a girl signaling with her eyes to the enemy; they pierced his chest with an arrow, but from his dying curse the girl's family suffered chest ailments. The refugee is now deified as a local god. Similarly in Yanagita, Fishing Village Life, pp. 110-11, an account is given of Engen-sama, a refugee betrayed in Okinoshima-mura by the Matsuuras, who now worship him to deflect his curse that their children would die young. The general motif is M460, "Curses on families."
Text from Bungo Densetsu Shu, pp. 58-59, from Kita Amabe-gun.
IN THE THICK WOODS at Yamada there is a small shrine by a little stream. A long time ago a young sister and brother fled to this village in order to hide from their pursuers. They found a cave called Komoridan and there they lived. One day a woodcutter who passed by the cave saw them and took pity on them. He decided to give them a cup of rice every day. The mother of the woodcutter became curious about her son's doings and asked him what he was up to. He told her about the sister and brother, begging her not to tell the other people about them. The old woman promised not to tell.
One day as the old woman was washing clothes in the river, the men who were chasing the brother and sister came to her and said: "If you tell us where the young people are, we will give you a reward." The greedy old woman was tempted to tell about them, but she remembered her promise to her son, so she did not tell them openly but turned her head in the direction of the mountain where the two young people were hiding. As soon as the pursuers saw that, they hastened to the mountain to search for the fugitives. Finally the pair was caught, and they were about to be killed under a big pine. Then the head man of the pursuing party took pity on the sister and brother and made a sign, shaking a baton in his hand. However, the men took it to be the sign to kill the two and they cut off their heads.
From that moment on, the old woman's head curved to one side and never regained its normal position. And her descendants all suffered from sore eyes. Moreover, an epidemic spread throughout this village. Therefore the villagers, fearing the curse of the two young people, enshrined the brother's spirit at Yamada and the sister's in the neighboring village of Kazamashi. This is said to be the origin of the Goryo Jinja [Shrine of the Vengeful Spirit].
THE SHRINE BUILT BY STRAW DOLLS
Hearn speaks of the belief in dolls coming alive and refers to a legend of a doll running out of a burning house (V, pp. 309-10). The present tale may belong to a cycle about the legendary carpenter Hida-no-takumi (the skilled worker of Hida). The pertinent motif is F675, "Ingenious carpenter."
Text from Katsuhiko Imamura, "Folktales from Bizen" (present Okayamaken), in Tabi to Densetsu, V (August, 1932), p. 579.
A LONG TIME AGO a feudal lord searched for a skillful carpenter in order to have a shrine built on the borders of Bizen and Bitchu provinces. But he could not find one. One day a carpenter came traveling from a distant province. The lord wondered why he came alone, because all the carpenters who had come before had had many apprentices. So he asked the carpenter: "Can you build a shrine all by yourself?" Then the carpenter answered: "Yes, I can. I will take it on my own responsibility if you give me the job." The lord granted his request, as he thought he was a rather unusual carpenter. All the people had a great interest in this carpenter. He told everybody not to come to the place where he was working until the building was completed.
The lord and all his servants were anxious to see the carpenter's work, but they let him work alone. The carpenter made rapid progress. In the daytime he worked alone, but by next morning he had done a great deal. The lord was curious about this and one night he secretly looked into the carpenter's working place. To his surprise he saw thirty or fifty carpenters identical with the original carpenter, all working busily. He tried to tell which was the true carpenter, but he couldn't. They were working hard in silence.
The days passed, and the shrine was about completed. The lord went there to give a reward to the carpenter, but he could not tell which one was the real carpenter. He asked the one beside him, who answered: "It is the one who has a mole near his eye." So the lord looked for the carpenter with a mole near his eye and gave him the reward. When the shrine was entirely constructed, that carpenter went away before anyone knew about it, and all the other carpenters fell down into the valley and died. People found many straw dolls down in the valley afterwards.
It is told that there was a small shrine where the straw dolls were found, and this shrine is the present Kibitsu Shrine.
VISIT TO ZENKO-JI DRIVEN BY A COW
This famous legend has become proverbial. Murai gives a Buddhist tradition on "The Origin of Zenko-ji Temple," pp. 57-61, and a variant of the present text on pp. 40-51, "An Old Woman at Nunobiki." His rendering of the verses traced from the cow's slobber is this:
Do not regard the fact,
As a mere ox's freak;
'Twas mercy of Buddha
To lead thee to righteousness!
The lines refer to a woman's cloth carried off on an ox's horn to a statue of Buddha. When in Nagano, I duly saw the grand Zenko-ji and was startled to come suddenly upon a frieze below a small altar showing the farmwife running frantically after the cow and her cloth, past astonished bystanders. The shrine on the mountainside at this old woman's village can be seen at the fourth station beyond the famed summer resort of Karuizawa. The story says that the old woman ran all the way from her village to Nagano, a distance ordinarily requiring ten hours to walk. A lovely illustrated four-page leaflet carrying a version of the legend has been issued by Zenkoji Temple, written by Priest Junsho Hayashi, and captioned "Pilgrimage to Zenko-ji Temple led by an Ox." Priest Hayashi interprets this title, which is used proverbially, in the sense of "entering the religious life led by grief," because ox is "ushi" in Japanese and "ushi" literally means grief.
Text from Masao Koyama, Chiisagata-gun Mintan Shu (Tokyo, 1933), p. 76.
Note: A temple often has two names, the first referring to the mountain on which it is built. Thus, for example, we have rendered Nunobiki-yama Shason-ji as "Shason-ji on Nunobiki-yama."
LONG AGO there was an old couple in Chiisagata-gun. They were badhearted and did not believe in any god or in Buddha. One day the old woman was bleaching cloth under the eaves. Suddenly a cow came there and, catching the cloth on its horn, ran away. The old woman became very angry and ran after it to get back the cloth, but the cow ran away somewhere and the day grew dark. The old woman looked around and found herself in front of the temple of Zenko-ji in Nagano. She could see the slobber of the cow by the light of the Buddha's statue. She read it as follows: "Don't complain about the god. It is from yourself that you find the way to a religious haven."
At these words the old woman immediately recovered a good heart and worshiped the Buddha. She went home with a clean, pious heart.
One day when she was going to pay homage to the Kannon of her village, the wind