Page:Japanese Peasant Songs.djvu/105

Fireflies

A song sung mostly in spring and early summer (although also heard at other times) and often used by boys as a call to each other. It has a tune somewhat similar to those used by English hunters on a horn. The song appears to be well known outside Kyūshū. In Kuma young boys learn it from older ones, not from a school text. Lafcadio Hearn records a version of the song which he gives as local to Izumo, in his chapter on children’s songs in A Japanese Miscellany.^[1] A literary form of the poem with an extra stanza by Kazumasa Yoshimaru is given in Uyehara’s Songs for Children 26.

103

Ho-ho-hottaru koi Sochi no mizu wa Nigai zo Kochi no mizu wa Amai zo Hotaru no yama kara Hottate koi

Ho-ho fireflies, come. The water over there Is bitter, The water over here Is sweet. From the mountain of fireflies Come.

Tokyo I Saw

This is sung as one player carries another upside down on her back.

104

Mieta mieta Tōkyō ga mieta

I saw, I saw, Tokyo I saw.

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1. Hearn’s text is:

   Hotaru koi midzu nomashō
   Achi no midzu wa nigai zo
   Kochi no midzu wa amai zo
   Amai hō e tonde koi.