Page:Japanese Peasant Songs.djvu/54

In the Mountains

Two songs often sung as one. The form of the first is 5-7-7-5, that of the second regular 7-7-7-5 dodoitsu.

54	Yama no naka Yama no naka Ikken ya demo Sume ba miyako yo Waga sato yo	In the mountains, In the mountains Though a solitary house, After living there it seems a great city: My native place.
55	Yama de akai no wa Tsutsuji to tsubaki Saete kara yaru Fuji no hana	Red in the mountain are Azalea and camellia—[1] I’ll give you when it blooms The wisteria flower.

You Are the Only Hero

This is probably a local adaptation of some popular song of the Meiji period, a time when all sorts of foreign things were being borrowed including English phrases in popular songs.

56

Gōgetsu[2] wa wari hitori Iroke no nai yoni Kai bashite Yokomede choito mite Ai dontu no[3]

You are the only hero— You pretend to have no feeling, Casting side glances, Glancing once. I don’t know.

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1. The slopes of Mount Ichifusa, the high (6,000 feet) mountain of Kuma are covered with azalea and camellia trees which bloom in a profusion of color in the spring. Many people of Kuma make a trip up the mountain at this time to visit the shrine and enjoy the beauty or the flowering trees.
2. For: gōketsu.
3. This line serves simply as a meaningless chorus line, comparable to yoiya sa as far as peasants of Kuma are concerned when they sing this song. The phrase has diffused to rural Kyūshū like other foreign terms such as matchi for ‘match’ or koppu for ‘glass’ which are locally regarded as native, not alien terms.