here in connection with the stars is that which inspires the festival named Tanabata. This fable, which is of Chinese origin, relates the loves of a Herdsman and a Weaving-girl. The Herdsman is a star in Aquila, the Weaver is the star Vega. They dwell on opposite sides of the "Celestial River," or Milky Way, and may never meet but on the 7th night of the 7th moon, a night held sacred to them, strips of paper with poetic effusions in their honour being stuck on stems of bamboo grass and set up in various places. According to one version of the legend, the Weaving-girl was so constantly kept employed in making garments for the offspring of the Emperor of Heaven—in other words, God—that she had no leisure to attend to the adornment of her person. At last, however, God, taking compassion on her loneliness, gave her in marriage to the Herdsman who dwelt on the opposite bank of the river. Hereupon the woman began to grow remiss in her work. God, in his anger, then made her recross the river, at the same time forbidding her husband to visit her oftener than once a year. Another version represents the pair as mortals, who were wedded at the early ages of fifteen and twelve, and who died at the ages of a hundred and three and ninety-nine respectively. After death, their spirits flew up to the sky, where the Supreme Deity bathed daily in the Celestial River. No mortals might pollute it by their touch, except on the 7th day of the 7th moon, when the Deity, instead of bathing, went to listen to the chanting of the Buddhist scriptures.
Supernatural Creatures of divers semi-human and animal shapes are still spoken of by the common people with a sort of half-belief, and retain an assured place in art. The Tennin, or Buddhist angels, are neither of the male sex, nor white-clad, nor. winged:—they are females, apparently of a certain age, who float in mid-air, robed in long, gay-coloured garments resembling swaddling-clothes, and who often play on flutes and lutes and other musical instruments. More popular than these—in
