BALLADS. The Fisher Boy Urashima.* 'Tis spring, and the mists come stealing And I stand by the seaside musing I muse on the old-world story, How he came not back to the village Though sev'n suns had risen and set, How they pledged their faith to each other, And enter'd the sea-god's palace So lovingly hand in hand, • For a literal prose version of this ballad see the second Appendix to Aston's "Grammar of the Japanese Written Language.” To dwell for aye in that country, But the foolish boy said, "To-morrow The maiden answered, "A casket To come back to the Evergreen Land, "Then open it not, I charge thee! Open it not, I beseech!" So the boy row'd home o'er the billows But where is his native hamlet? Strange hamlets line the strand. Where is his mother's cottage? Strange cots rise on either hand. "What, in three short years since I left it," He cries in his wonder sore, "Has the home of my childhood vanished? Is the bamboo fence no more? "Perchance if I open the casket Which the maiden gave to me, Will come back as they used to be." And he lifts the lid, and there rises That floats off to the Evergreen Country:- He waves the sleeve of his tunic, But a sudden chill comes o'er him His breath grows fainter and fainter, (ANON.) • Such frantic demonstrations of grief are very frequently mentioned in the early poetry, and sound strangely in the ears of those who are accustomed to the more than English reserve of the modern Japanese. Possibly, as in Europe, so in Japan, there may have been a real change of character in this respect. The legend of Urashima is one of the oldest in the language, and traces of it may even be found in the official annals, where it is stated that "in the twenty-first year of the Mikado Iyuuriyaku, the boy Urashima of Midzunoye, in the district of Yosa, in the province of Tañgo, a descendant of the divinity Shimanemi, went to Elysium in a fishing-boat." And again, that "in the second year of Teñchiyau, under the Mikado Go-Zhiyuñwa... the boy Urashima returned, and then disappeared, none knew whither." The dates mentioned correspond to A.D. 477 and 825. Urashima's tomb, together with his fishing-line, the casket given him by the maiden, and two stones said to be precious, are still shown at one of the temples in Kanagaha near Yokohama ; and by most of even the educated Japanese, the story, thus historically and topographically certified, is accepted as literally true. In the popular version, the "Evergreen Land," visited by Urashima is changed into the Dragon Palace, to which later Japanese myth, coloured by Chinese tradition, has assigned the residence of the sea-god. The word Dragon Palace is in Japanese ringu, or, more properly, rinkiu, which is likewise the Japanese pronunciation of the name of the islands we call Loochoo, and the Chinese Liu-kiu; and it has been suggested by some, that the Dragon Palace may be but a fanciful name given by some shipwrecked voyager to those sunny southern isles, whose inhabitants still distinguish themselves, even above their Chinese and Japanese neighbours, by their fondness for the dragon as an artistic and architectural adornment. There is one ode in the “Mañycfushifu" which would favour this idea, speak. ing, as it docs, of the orange having been first brought to Japan from the "Evergreen Land " lying to the south. |