Note 51.1 — Chapter XVII · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA IN SAGAS.

The tale of the Rescue of Andromeda is known to the farthest limits of Asia. Mr. J. F. Campbell describes a picture he saw in a temple at Shimonoshua in Japan. “A man with long black hair and a hooked nose, and a long straight sword, loose red trousers, a flowered white cloak, and curled-up shoes, like those of the Mikado and Laplanders. Eight round China vases, breaking waves and the sea; a weird tree, and a storm of wind and rain driving at the man; eight heads, like the head of the dragon of the fountain [previously described]. A woman crouched in a cago, behind the warrior, dressed in Japanese draperies; a great deal of unpainted wood to make the background of this curious old sketch by a very clever hand; a lot of Japanese writing, and a black frame which had remnants of gilding. That was the picture. The whole was much weathered and battered and in a bad light. It is at least three hundred years old.”51.1 Mr. Campbell was not the man to look at such a picture without having his curiosity aroused to know its meaning; and he learned from Massanao, his youthful squire at Shimonoshua, a story substantially identical with the account I follow derived from a different source. Susa No, the tricksy son of Isanagi, the Japanese Creator, being forbidden to return to heaven after his exploits there, and reluctant to turn his steps to the Underworld, which he had of his own free choice inherited as his abode, wandered through the earth. From Corea he crossed the strait and landed at Idzumo in Japan. As he trod the shore eager to know who dwelt in that strange country he heard the sound of weeping and wailing. Passing onwards in the direction of the sound, he beheld in a little glen an old man and woman, and between them was seated a lovely maiden whose bitter sighing and tears they were striving in vain to still. Susa No quickened his steps towards the group, and gently inquired the reason of this grief. “I am Ashinadzutchi, the god of this country,” said the old man, rising and bowing low before the stranger. “Peacefully I and mine tend the cultivation of rice; and there were nothing left for us to wish if only we were freed from one frightful, indescribably cruel calamity. Seven daughters have already been devoured by a hideous sea-monster. The creature came hither when my daughters were in the very flower of their beauty. It was incapable of compassion; it regarded not their screams of agony, but devoured them. This is the last of our daughters, our beautiful and good Inada; and of her too the monster will rob us; we know it only too well; and that is why we are mourning and weeping with our dear child.” The astounded Susa No inquired more particularly about the monster, and learned that it was a terrible dragon with eight heads, whose glowing eyes shone afar and were red as red berries. Its back was overgrown with downright forests; its belly was blood-red, and continually bedabbled in blood; its whole coiling length was as long as some winding valley. Undaunted, however, he promised help against the oppressor; only he prayed the old man and his wife to give him the fair Inada to wife if he succeeded in rescuing her from the dragon’s maw. His measures were soon taken. He requested Ashinadzutchi to prepare a great quantity of saki. He himself the while built eight small rooms or enclosures, open above; and in each room he put a large vat of saki. When the monster drew nigh he threw a woman’s robe around him and placed himself so that his reflection fell into the first vat. The hungry dragon, seeing it, plunged its first head into the vat, deeming that its prey was there. With headlong speed it drained the saki to reach the maiden, but found her not. Her image was shimmering and beckoning from the second vat; and rashly and greedily it plunged another head into that. In vain it emptied the second vat; in vain it pursued the same false image into the depths of the remaining vats one after the other. By the time the eight vats were emptied the monster rolled over on the earth in a drunken sleep. Then Susa No stepped forward, flung off his disguise, drew his sword, smote off the heads of the ungainly brute, and hewed his mighty body into small pieces. But when he came to the tail his good sword was notched and blunted with the blows. Then he discovered in the dragon’s tail a sword even better than his own. He took the prize, called it Cloud-sword, because the dragon was ever girt with dense clouds, and sent it as a gift to his sister Amaterasu, the sun-goddess, up yonder in heaven. She held it ever in high esteem, and in after-days gave it to her grandson, the ancestor of the Mikado. By him it was bequeathed to his descendants, and it is still, if report lie not, among the most precious treasures of the imperial crown. Inada was not unwilling to be bestowed upon a wooer who had won her so nobly. They dwelt long and happily together in Idzumo, and became the parents of a race of heroes and rulers renowned in story. And Susa No made upon his conquest of the dragon and his marriage the oldest poem in the Japanese tongue, whence he is honoured as the inventor of the art of poetry.53.1