[13] Here one is tempted to see mouse-Apollo, or the mouse of the Homeric Apollo who shoots the arrows of disease. The mice that strip the arrows of their feathers may be the arresters of disease. Mouse medicine is of great antiquity in Egypt. [↑]
[14] “Divine messages,” says Chamberlain, “were conveyed through a person playing on the lute.” The language of the “lute” was thus like the “language of birds”. [↑]
[15] This is a Far Eastern version of the Jack-and-the-Beanstalk story. [↑]
[16] Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. X (supplement), p. 81. [↑]
[17] Native commentators say “goose” or “wren”; some consider that owing to a copyist’s error “insect” has been changed to bird, and that the reading should be “moth” or “silk-worm moth” or “fire insect”. [↑]
[18] Some think this plant is one that bears a berry three or four inches long, and that the boat was a scooped-out berry. [↑]
[19] This is not Yomi, but either the Chinese Paradise of the West or the Paradise of the Buddhists. [↑]
[20] A Chinese phrase signifying anciently the Chinese world or empire. The “Crumbling Deity” may be the “leech-child”, or the caterpillar worshipped by a Japanese cult. [↑]