いなやきじ人にならせるかりごろも
わが身にふれば憂きかもぞつく
わが身にふれば憂きかもぞつく
- Roma-ji
-
Ina ya kiji hito ni naraseru karigoromo waga mi ni fureba uki ka mo zo tsuku
- English Translation
-
No — I shall not wear
it. That hunting robe you let
another wear soft
if it touches me, a bitter
scent will cling to me from it
- Meaning
- No, I shall not wear it. That hunting robe, which you let another wear soft — if it touches me, a bitter scent will cling.
- Commentary
-
167 The Borrowed Robe
A man borrowed a woman's robe, wore it to the house of his new wife, and did not show himself again. He wore the robe quite out, and when he sent it back he added to it a pheasant, a goose and a duck — things that had been lying uselessly in another province. At that the woman sent him this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Neither the man, the woman, nor the new wife is named. The hunting robe was originally worn for hunting and by this time served as everyday dress. Pheasant, goose and duck are all game.
The setting is the return of the robe, worn out.
What prompted the poem was that return, with the birds added.
The section ends with the poem; no response and no later event is recorded.
The word in the first line means both I shall not wear it and a pheasant, so that her refusal and the bird he sent stand in one word.
What follows means to have let another wear it soft; the verb covers the wearing-in of a garment and growing intimate with a person, and points at the other woman's house.
The name of the robe contains both hunting and borrowing, so that the garment's name and the fact that it was lent are one word — and the provenance of the game with it.
The closing turns on a syllable that means a scent, giving a bitter smell that will cling. Another woman's perfume is in the cloth. Every item he returned is taken up into a pun, and the poem refuses the lot.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- Not that I did not see you, nor that I saw you — and longing for one seen so, shall I spend today gazing out, and to no purpose
- Seen or not seen — and knowing me for whom, is it that you say you long A day of gazing out, this and nothing certain in it
- I have seen your heart and seen it hard — the third watch of the ox: no more hoping — I slept, to see if you would come to me in dreams
- All men, I am told have put on their flowered robes again — and you, sleeve of moss, at the least of it dry: only let yourself dry