In days long past, when a man was passing a certain lady’s apartments at the palace, the lady, seeming to bear him some ill will, called out, ‘Go on, then, you creeper and see what becomes of you!’[1] The man replied:
罪もなき人をうけへば忘れ草おのが上にぞ生ふといふなる
| tsumi mo naki hito o uke’eba wasuregusa ono ga ue ni zo ou to iu naru | When a sinless Man you curse, Forgotten, among the day-lillies Upon you Growing, will you be, they say! |
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Some among the women were very vexed by that.
[1] Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455-1537) identifies this as part of a poem from Shoku man’yōshū:
忘れゆくつらさはいかにいのちあらばよしや草葉よならむさがみむ
| wasureyuku tsurasa wa ika ni inochi araba yoshi ya kusaba naramu saga mimu | To gradually forget Your cruelty, somehow Had I but life left, Go on, then, you creeper, and See what becomes of you! |
Shoku man’yōshū is no longer extant, and so the accuracy of this cannot be determined (Horiuchi and Akiyama 1997, 111).
Kusaba (‘blade of grass’), which I have translated as ‘creeper’, was a slang term used to refer to an unfaithful man.
