No. 261
How they formerly Ate and Drank
In a certain country there was a very important rich family, it is said. In this family were the two parents and their children, two sons only.
In the course of time the people of the family arrived at a very poor condition, it is said. During the time when they are thus, the mother of these two young children having gone near a shipping town,[1] winnowed the rice of the ships and continued to get her living. One day when she was winnowing the rice of a ship, quite unperceived by her the ship went to sea [with her on board].
During the time when he was thus unaware to which hand this woman who was the chief support[2] of the family—or the mother—went, the father one day for some necessary matter having gone together with the two sons to cross to that other bank of the river, tied one son to a tree on the bank on this side and placed him [there]; and having gone with the other one to the bank on that side, and tied the son to a tree there, came to take the other son [across]. While on the return journey in this way, this old man having been caught by a current in the river, and been taken by force to a very distant country, went to a village where they dry salt fish.
An old woman having seen the two children who had been tied on the two banks by him, unfastened their bonds (baemi); having heard [from one of them] about their birth and two parents, learning all the circumstances, she employed some person and caused even the child who was on the bank on that [other] side to be brought, and reared both of them.
During the time while the father of the two children was getting his living, drying salt fish, the King of that country died. Well then, because there was not a Crown Prince[3] of the King of the country, according to the mode of the custom of that country having decorated the King’s festival tusk elephant and placed the crown on its back, they sent it [in search of a new King]. And the tusk elephant having gone walking, and gone in front of that poor man who was drying salt fish, when it bent the knee he mounted on the back of the tusk elephant, and having come to the palace was appointed to the sovereignty.
After he was thus exercising the sovereignty a little time, it became necessary for this King to go somewhere to a country, and having mounted on a ship it began to sail away. The two sons who belonged in the former time to this King, who were being reared by the old woman, having become big were stationed for their livelihood as guards on this very ship. Their mother who was lost during the former time, earned a living by winnowing rice on this very ship.
Well then, while these very four persons remained unable to get knowledge of each other, during the night time, when the ship is sailing, in order to remove the sleepiness of the two brothers who were on the ship as guards, the younger brother told the elder brother to relate a story. And when the elder brother said, “I do not know how to tell stories,” because again and again he was forcing him to relate anything whatever, he said, “I do know indeed how to relate the manner of [our] ancient eating and drinking.”
“It is good. If so, relate even that,” the younger brother said.