Once, long ago there was a man. He abducted someone’s daughter and when they reached Musashi Plain, as he was plainly a kidnapper, he would have been seized by the provincial governor’s men. Leaving the woman in the grasses, he fled. The pursuers, saying to themselves that doubtless the abductor was hiding there, set the plain alight. The woman, panicked, cried out:
武蔵野は今日はな燒きそ若草のつまもこもれり我もこもれり
| musasino Fa keFu Fa na yaki so wakakusa no tuma mo komoreri ware mo komoreri |
O, Musashi Plain Burn not this day! Fresh grass, My man is hidden there, As, too, am I… |
Hearing this, they found her and, together with the man who had been found elsewhere, took her back with them.