“My lady Tamamo,” said Abé Yasu the Diviner, “I have made a song after the fashion of the Chinese. You who are learned in poetry, I pray you hear and judge my song.”
“I am in no mood for songs,” she said, “with my dear lord lying sick to death.”
“Nevertheless, my lady Tamamo, this song of mine you needs must hear.”
“Why, then, if I must ...” she said.
“The wine is sweet, the aftertaste is bitter.
Set not your teeth in the golden persimmon,
It is rotten at the core.
Fair is the scarlet flower of the Death Lily,
Pluck it not.
What is beauty?
What is wisdom?
What is love?
Be not deceived. They are threads in the fabric of illusion!”
When Abé Yasu the Diviner had spoken, he came to Tamamo and he touched her with the sacred Gohei.
She gave a loud and terrible cry, and on the instant her form was changed into that of a great fox having nine long tails and hair like golden wire. The fox fled from Tamamo’s bower, away and away, until it reached the far plain of Nasu, and it hid itself beneath a great black stone that was upon that plain.
But the Mikado was immediately recovered from his sickness.
Soon, strange and terrible things were told concerning the great stone of Nasu. A stream of poisonous water flowed from under it and withered the bright flowers of the plain. All who drank of the stream died, both man and beast. Moreover, nothing could go near the stone and live. The traveller who rested in its shadow arose no more, and the birds that perched upon it fell dead in a moment. People named it the Death Stone, and thus it was called for more than a hundred years.