Ashinoya no unai otome no okutsuki o yukiku to mireba ne nomi shi nakayu

芦屋の菟原娘子の奥城を
行き来と見れば哭のみし泣かゆ

Roma-ji: Ashinoya no unai otome no okutsuki o yukiku to mireba ne nomi shi nakayu
English Translation: At Ashinoya
the maiden of Unai's
grave, whenever I
come and go and look on it,
I can only weep aloud.
Meaning: Whenever I see the grave of the Maiden of Unai at Ashinoya, coming and going, I can only weep aloud.
Commentary: Book Nine Elegies 1810

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "A poem on seeing the grave of the Maiden of Unai, with tanka"; envoy
Each time he sees the grave of the Maiden of Unai at Ashinoya, going and returning, the speaker cannot help weeping aloud. He is deeply moved by the sad fate of the legendary girl.
This is the envoy to the long poem 1809 in this book. The long poem tells how the youth of Chinu and the youth of Unai fought for the Maiden of Unai, how she, grieved that men should fight over her, took her own life to wait for them in the land of the dead, how the two men followed her, and how her kin built her grave in the middle with the men's on either side; hearing the tale, the speaker weeps as if at a fresh death though he never knew her. In the legend of the Maiden of Unai, a girl of Unai District in Settsu (around present-day Ashiya and eastern Kobe, Hyōgo) was courted by two men, the youth of Chinu and the youth of Unai, and in her distress took her own life; her grave was built in the middle with the two men's graves on either side.
The author, Takahashi no Mushimaro, was a poet of the early Nara period who is thought to have served under Fujiwara no Umakai when Umakai was governor of Hitachi. He excelled at long poems on local legends and the landscape of the eastern provinces. This poem is taken from the Mushimaro Collection, which is thought to consist mainly of his own works.

The first line, "at Ashinoya," names the place in Settsu.
The second line, "the maiden of Unai's," names the legendary girl.
The third line, "grave, whenever I," renders okutsuki o, "the grave," like the close of 1802, "this is her grave." Poems from the Sakimaro and Mushimaro Collections sing of the same legend and echo each other among this book's elegies.
The fourth line, "come and go and look on it," means seeing it on the way out and back.
The final line, "I can only weep aloud," uses ne, "weeping aloud," and yu for something that happens of itself.
Author: Takahashi no Mushimaro (from the Mushimaro Collection)
Source: Manyoshu
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