A Japanese miscellany - University of Oregon

162 Japanese Miscellany
since his death. Nay — I thought it was the seventh day,—
it is already the forty-ninth i
! What will be the best way
Buying dear
to spend the money of the forty-ninth day ? —
rice, to freight a ship ; — buying cheap rice, to freight a ship.
— As for the ship, where is it from ? — It is an Osaka ship.
— Ah I the cost of an Osaka ship is indeed very high !
Ill
MISCELLANEOUS PLAY-SONGS
Of play-songs, — songs to be sung with vari-
ous out-door or in-door games, — tiie number is
very great : my own collection includes upwards
of two hundred pieces. Some take the form of
stories ; others, of dialogues ; others belong to
that class which the French call chanson enu-
merate, or randonnee : a few are impossible to
classify. And some of the most remarkable are
so very queer, — so utterly unlike anything sung
by Western children, — that any translation of
them would remain, even with the aid of a
multitude of notes, unintelligible to readers un-
familiar with Japanese life. But I think that
the following series of examples will sufficiently
» There is a reference here to the Buddhist services for the dead
held on the seventh and forty-ninth days after interment.