Then he sent her a poem which said:
“Oh, the well, the well!
I who scarce topped the well-frame
Am grown to manhood since we met.”
And she to him:
“The two strands of my hair
That once with yours I measured,
Have passed my shoulder;
Who but you should put them up?”[196]
So they wrote, and at last their desire was fulfilled. Now after a year or more had passed the girl’s parents died, and they were left without sustenance. They could not go on living together; the man went to and fro between her house and the town of Takayasu in Kawachi, while she stayed at home.
Now when he saw that she let him go gladly and showed no grief in her face, he thought it was because her heart had changed. And one day, instead of going to Kawachi, he hid behind the hedge and watched. Then he heard the girl singing:
“The mountain of Tatsuta that rises
Steep as a wave of the sea when the wind blows
To-night my lord will be crossing all alone!”
And he was moved by her song, and went no more to Takayasu in Kawachi.
In the play a wandering priest meets with a village girl, who turns out to be the ghost of the girl in this story. The text is woven out of the words of the Ise Monogatari.