パトリック・ラフカディオ・ハーン(Patrick Lafcadio Hearn：小泉八雲)自身は、寒川町と縁もゆかりもありません。
しかし、彼の作品「Kwaidan」(怪談)の中に出てくる人が寒川町に縁があります。
「Kwaidan」の中に「Of a Mirror and a Bell」(鏡と鐘)という作品があります。
ここに、このように書かれています。
「EIGHT centuries ago, the priests of Mugenyama, in the province of Tōtōmi, wanted a big bell for their temple; and they asked the women of their parish to help them by contributing old bronze mirrors for bell-metal.
(略)
After the bell had been rolled into the swamp, there was, of course, no more chance of ringing it in such wise as to break it. But persons who regretted this loss of opportunity would strike and break objects imaginatively substituted for the bell, – thus hoping to please the spirit of the owner of the mirror that had made so much trouble.
One of these persons was a woman called Umégaë, – famed in Japanese legend because of her relation to Kajiwara Kagésué, a warrior of the Heiké clan. While the pair were traveling together, Kajiwara one day found himself in great straits for want of money; and Umégaë, remembering the tradition of the Bell of Mugen, took a basin of bronze, and, mentally representing it to be the bell, beat upon it until she broke it, – crying out, at the same time, for three hundred pieces of gold.
A guest of the inn where the pair were stopping made inquiry as to the cause of the banging and the crying, and, on learning the story of the trouble, actually presented Umégaë with three hundred ryō in gold.
[出典]
https://www.trussel.com/hearn/mirror.htm
ここに出てくる「Kajiwara Kagésué」は、梶原景時の嫡男、梶原源太景季です。
ラフカディオ・ハーンは「夜窓鬼談」の「祈得金」を見て「Of a Mirror and a Bell」を書いたとのことです。
[出典] (注)PDFファイルが開く、または、ダウンロードされます。
https://repository.dl.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/record/2007438/files/choiki27007.pdf
「夜窓鬼談」の「祈得金」は掛川市の伝説「無間の鐘」と「ひらかな盛衰記」の「神崎揚屋の段」に着想を得たと思われます。
[参考]
https://www.city.kakegawa.shizuoka.jp/gyosei/docs/7621.html
https://enmokudb.kabuki.ne.jp/repertoire/1767/
寒川町一之宮、「伝 梶原七士の墓」の近くに、源太と梅が枝と思われる碑が建っています。
コメント
コメントを投稿