The Lower Book補閑集 卷下

A man fond of such things gathered couplets in the seven-word tonal form (聲律), graded them, set them high and low, and asked me, "Those lines that are grand and deep, strange and subtle, antique and fine, wide and far — a man must read them over and over with care, and only after long looking does he get the taste of them. So learners do not delight in them. The poems of Du of the Board of Works (工部) are of that kind. The few couplets I have gathered here are all words that please a man at one glance, and they may serve to patch an idle hour. Write them, if you will, at the end of the book."

Looking at what he had graded, it was all argued newly out of his own guessing and did not follow the men of old. Still there was something in it worth taking, so I set it out below.

New and startling — Duke Munsun, "The tower of Manilsa":

The boat that carried a few men over floats there of itself. The lone tiger has roared itself out, and the birds are calling still.

Containment — Ye Nakjeon, the academician, "Living at leisure":

The pack is for ten thousand li, and spring is already late. The reckoning is for a hundred years, and how long the night is.

Graceful and lovely — Duke Munsun, "Written on a summer day":

Thick leaves screen the flowers, and they are there past the spring. Thin cloud lets the sun through, and it is bright inside the rain.

Clear and steep — my late grandfather, "Buksansa":

Pine sound falling on the railing shaves the night clear. The hill's bones leaning on the void whet the autumn cold.

Outstanding and bold — Kim Geukgi, the Hallim:

The feet of the heavenly horse are proud, and a thousand li are near. The head of the sea turtle is bold, and the five mountains are light.

Wealth and rank — Jo Baekgi, the libationer:

In the side court of orioles and flowers the pipes and songs choke. At the carriage and the high gate the swords and girdle jades ring.

Brilliance — Duke Munsun, "Gamnosa":

Frost flowers catch the sun and add to the autumn dew. The breath of the sea offends the cloud and scatters the evening mist.

Floating and free — Jin, the rectifier of omissions, "On the river":

The wind blows rain at the sail of the old fisherman. The hill dyes autumn beyond the shadow of the sand gull.

Clear and far — my late grandfather, "Seonggeosa on Buksan":

The white cloud of another valley I send away, tilting my pillow. The bright moon that has reached the hill I meet, rolling up the blind.

Strange and skillful — Duke Munsun, "Heungseongsa":

The running vine meets a bend and can hardly be made a staff. The fallen tree, being high, has become a ladder by chance.

Lodging an intent — Yi Baekjeon, the director of studies, "The stream pavilion at Dongsan":

The ground tilts, and though the contrary current gathers to the north, the times are at peace, and the Mian (沔水) gathers and goes east to court.

Roaming at ease — Duke Munsun, "After begging leave to retire":

Having gone all round the world, the idle monk sits down. Having known men through and through, the old singing girl rests.

Feeling — Duke Munsun, "In sickness":

Sick, I think of my old friends, and there are only tears, and for nothing. Old, I think of my bright king, and what is to be done with the heart?

Bold and easy — Yi Misu:

How many houses are they, that rise and sink again among the woods? Where are those hills, that seem to be and not to be beyond the sky?

Clear and swift — Duke Munsun, "The tower of Buksa":

The idle cloud makes a thousand shapes in a moment. The running water makes one sound always.

Kim, the Hallim:

The frontier moon has much feeling: it rounds and wanes again. The mountain flower has little style: it falls and opens again.

Deep and wide — Kim, the Hallim:

In the abandoned pond that foretells rain the frogs croak, each one. In the dry tree that watches the wind the magpies chatter.

Duke Munsun, "Heungseongsa":

The cold roe deer that hates the snow fights for a dry burrow. The hidden bird that shuns the wind chooses a low branch.

Bright and fair — Kim, the Hallim:

The rain sends the purple shoots back to the wild bracken. The wind hurries the green fruit up onto the river plum.

Duke Munsun:

The rain clears, and the color of the grass runs green into the void. The wind is warm, and the plum blossom crosses the pass in its scent.

These two couplets are of one frame, but the couplet of "the rain sends" has a breath that floats.

Fresh and open — Jeong, the secretariat drafter, "The temple tower in Yeongnam":

A night leaning on the railing, with the bright moon of one stream. A sky with the blind rolled up, and a clear wind of ten thousand li.

Duke Munsun, "Buksansa":

On half the wall the evening sun, and the shadows of flying birds. Over the whole hill the autumn moon, and the cold cry of gibbons.

"Yongdamsa":

Among the shadows of ten thousand willows, the road north and south. Within the sound of one stream, two or three houses.

All are of one frame, but the words "a clear wind of ten thousand li" are the finer.

Splendid and fair — what my mother's father sent up to Yi Sunu, the gan-ui:

He grips his brush, and warmly it is wet with the dew of the red peony. His court robe flies lightly in the wind of the crape myrtle.

And again, sent up to Chief Minister Gi:

With flower shadows all over his robe he goes to court at the warm chamber. Down one path of pine shade he withdraws to the cold study.

Yi Misu:

The wind is fine, and the sound of girdle jade carries to the Purple Forbidden (紫禁). The sun is high, and the flower shadows climb the red wall.

And again:

The sun strikes the flowered brick and meets his drunken step. The moon joins the lotus candles and shines into the corridor.

My mother's father:

In the flower garden the rain clears, and the red dew seems to weep. On the bamboo steps the sun stands at noon, and the green frost is dry.

These five couplets are all of one frame, but the wording and the making of the lines of "flower shadows all over his robe" are the better.

Firm and bold — what my late grandfather sent up on the western campaign (西征) of Duke Munyeol:

At one sound of drum and horn the green hills split. Under banners of ten thousand li the white sun goes dim. He sweeps river and hill clean and gives them back to the holy king. He washes wind and moon and sends them home to the old man of poems (詩翁). Samosan stands high, and loyalty is bold. Obongnu stands high, and the hand of the country is grand.

Duke Munsun drew a rhyme and made a poem on the coiled pine at the house of Duke Jingang:

Heaven and earth all come inside his breath of praise. Grass and tree are glorious still before his turning glance.

Choe Jongbeon, the seungje, climbed high and looked toward Jangan:

Ten streams wind like snakes about Pyeongjangdong. Three ridges coil like dragons at the house of the academicians.〔It is said in the world that the five houses of Songgyeong are all houses of academicians, and that they stand among the three ridges.〕

These five couplets are all of one frame, but the three couplets sent up to Duke Munyeol are the clearest and grandest.

Bold and beautiful — Yu Chunggi, the director of studies, on first entering the new capital:

He makes the sea his gate and raises a palace of glass. The hills open their flowers of themselves, and it is a capital of brocade.〔In the year imjin he moved and lived at Hwasan on the sea.〕

Kim Sinjeong, the Hallim, "On night duty in the new capital":

With the wind and moon of one river the Golden Gate (金門) is far. With the mist and flowers of ten thousand lands the jade carriage has its spring.

Both are of one frame, but Yu's is the richer and the bolder.

When Uimyo went to the Western Capital, Baek Gwangsin, the academician, was serving as gwangi of Hwangju, and he sent up a song that said:

The water of the Dongseon (洞仙) stream has the color of a thousand years. The pine wind of Jeollyeong (岊嶺) has the sound of ten thousand hollows.

When the granddaughter of Duke Jinyang was matched with the crown prince and bore a son, the duke feasted the many princes of the royal house and set out the music of the eight dong for them to watch.〔The several wards of the old capital were called the twelve dong, and each had its village music. When the capital was moved they all fell away, so Duke Jinyang made eight dong again and looked over their music.〕

Dongsandong sent up a song that said:

The tune of Dongsan is this child made bright by four. The sound of Jungak (中岳) is ten thousand years called by three.〔Jasan (子山) was taken for Jungak, and that dong also sent up music.〕

Hwasandong said:

The hairpins and shoes of one house gather in the Three Han. The pipes and songs of the eight dong are the sound of ten thousand years of life.

These three couplets are of one grade.

In all the use of old matter there are differences: sometimes it is a name or a style, sometimes a word or a deed. For the most part a couplet that uses old matter rarely has a new meaning. Only when it is borrowed does it seem to have a new meaning, and then it loses the fact.

Misu wrote:

Tao Qian, growing old, is just now giving up wine. The old man Du, being idle, does not comb his hair.

This uses the names of men of old.

Again he wrote:

Clinging to the warm, how should I follow the son of Mr. Bing (氷氏)? Breaking off friendship, I hate above all Elder Brother Square Hole (孔方兄).

This borrows names.

Again he wrote:

I would be the Qin doctor of learning inside the cave. What need is there of the Han general of the western march upon my grave?

This uses the offices of men of old.

My late grandfather wrote:

In the Ice Hall (氷廳) he hangs a mirror and takes in the cold scholar. In the Frost Office (霜署) he lifts the net rope and strikes the warm official.

This borrows the names of offices.

Duke Munsun wrote:

The drunken man who fell from the carriage was kept whole by wine alone. The old man who held the jar — how should he have had a scheming heart?

This uses words of men of old.

My late grandfather wrote:

In a whole life of thin office, who has got the deer? An old friend a thousand li away — do you know the fish?

This borrows words of men of old.〔The words about getting the deer do not point to thin office, and the saying about knowing the fish has nothing to do with an old friend. These are all borrowed.〕

Duke Munsun wrote:

The taste of the world, shallow and deep, I dipped my finger in long ago. The gain and loss of a man's life — I have forgotten the fish trap already.

"Dipping the finger" borrows a deed of men of old 〔It is like the borrowing of words in "knowing the fish" above.〕, and "forgetting the fish trap" borrows words of men of old.

The poets prize borrowing. But if the use of it is not skillful, the meaning turns about and the words come out raw.

Yun Uil, the lecturer, and Jo Munbal, the lecturer, were together in the examination hall of the National Academy, testing the arts. Jo made a poem that said:

It would rain, it would clear, and the sky half laughs. There is no wind, there is no moon, and the night is wholly deaf.

Yun chanted it over and tasted it a long while and said, "This is what the men of old called borrowing a letter. It is very skillful."

My late grandfather's "The moon on the night of the twenty-fifth of the ninth month" says:

I have already hidden the cool fan in the autumn box, and little by little I see the cold hook hang on the dawn blind.

The drawing of the thing is fine and subtle.

Duke Munsun, answering Yi Su's "Chanting the color white" two and three times over, wrote:

The light of the tablet, before he has withdrawn from court. The color of the window, when the drunkenness is just wearing off.

This too is strange and startling.

Gang Irun, at the royal examination, drew a rhyme and chanted the snow:

The sound follows the fisherman's straw cape and goes back to the shore of the Wei. The trace follows the monk's staff and enters Tiantai.

This holds down a hard rhyme, and very skillfully.

When I went into the northern court I saw this written on the wall of a village house in the old land of Yan:

Before spring there is rain, and the flowers open early. After autumn there is no frost, and the leaves fall late.

Beside it was written "danjeok (端的)". This must mean that the setting out of the matter and the matching of the pairs hit the mark exactly.

Jeong Yeoryeong, answering Duke Munui's poem on the reed, wrote:

On the day the spring shoots are green the blowfish come up. At the time the autumn leaves are yellow the frontier geese come.

This is a chanting of a thing that hits the mark. The setting out of a matter does not come up to the chanting of a thing.

It is handed down in the world that Duke Munui saw this line of Yeoryeong's and said, "My poem dare not stand on the same block with this," and at once cut his own away. But the one who tells this goes too far. Look at Jeong's poem. Exact though it is, it is the way of a new man who scores the candle and chants a thing, what is called the style of those who compose in haste.

Long ago, when I was one of the capped youths and went to a summer study meeting, we drew a rhyme and made a quick poem on the taro:

At planting time the doves are first bringing forth their young. On the day of the harvest the geese first come as guests.

This too is that style.

On "Cherries":

Picked and brought, a thousand beads of summer fruit. Thought upon, one branch of snow of the spring flower.

This too is of one frame, yet in a different style.

Two students chanted the folding chair (絞床). One said:

Below, for fear of being crushed if it topples, the props of the legs go crooked. In the middle, disliking to sink through, the woven cords are many.

The other said:

In the shadow of the blue gown, little favor is had. In the sound of the painted horn, much of one's will is had.

The meaning of the couplet about being crushed is skillful, but its words are trifling. The words of "the blue gown" are not the quick work of a new man. They are the words of an old scholar.

Yi Su, the sirang, was asked by someone and ran his brush on "The scabbard":

Wrapped in hide, it still has the stuff of a general. Coated in lacquer, it keeps the air of a scholar of the realm. Fearing the tube would not stay, the middle grows narrow. Hating that much dust should clog it, the lower end is a little open.

The couplet "fearing" is of the same grade of language as the couplet "being crushed," and its handling of the three letters "fear (恐)," "stay (留)," and "hate (惡)" is rawer still and thinner. Yet it became what the fashion of that time prized. "Wrapped in hide" and "coated in lacquer" are both common speech. Had he changed them to "wrapped in horsehide (裹革)" and "the body lacquered (漆身)," there would have been something in this couplet worth looking at.

The Critique of Poetry (詩評) says, "The breath should be raw and the words should be ripe. In first learning, the breath is raw; after that the bold breath runs free; after the bold breath runs free, the old breath is full and free."

What Duke Munsun ran off with his brush in his young days were all lines of raw breath, and they were on the lips of everyone. As in the poem he made to the rhymes of the elder Mun, who had sent him verses:

Sleep is sweet — a study of rain in the deep lane. The night is cold — news of one jar of ice.

Again:

A few lines of a poem press upon me in the midst of leisure. The sound of one board of go is loud within the quiet.

Again:

The mist and glow of one valley are the monk's wealth and rank. The pines and moon of two peaks are the crane's living.〔That temple faces two peaks.〕 The bird sounds of morning and evening are the trees outside the gate. The shadows of men now and long ago are the pool beside the road.

Again:

The bamboo on the steps is worn by the shade, and its grandchildren do not grow. The plum in the yard is full of rain, and its fruit has just grown fat.

Again:

For a face to meet good wine and redden twice is easy. For an eye to whiten once for a beautiful woman is hard.

The white snow that fills the wood the gibbons leap and break. The slanting sun on half the wall the birds call away.

The bamboo roots split the ground, and the dragon's waist is bent. The plantain leaves turn over the steps, and the phoenix tail is long.

The toad-bellied inkstone is cold, and the writing freezes easily. The lion-footed brazier is warm, and I am too idle to move where I sit.

From watching go, the trace it leaves is the creases in the clothes. From cutting down wine, the strange merit is that the words lose their heat.

"The slanting sun on half the wall" is clear and fresh in the grade of its words. "From cutting down wine, the strange merit" has a raw breath and ripe words. "The shadows of men now and long ago" — the wording is already worn, but the intent lodged in it is new. The couplet "press upon me in the midst of leisure" — the words are shallow, but the meaning is not shallow.

When Muuija was a student of the Taehak he went walking in the fields and wrote:

The mulberry girl with the basket on her arm has gathered the color of spring. The straw-caped old man with the hat on his head wears the sound of the rain.

Jin, the rectifier of omissions, wrote:

Meeting the rock, the waist of the tree becomes rough and knotted. Entering the ground, the foot of the spring loses its purling.

In the line "the basket on her arm" both breath and words are raw, and it became what the fashion of the time prized. In the couplet "meeting the rock" the breath is raw but the words are ripe still, and even one grown old in poetry was startled by it.

In all poems that record what is fine and set forth one's own case, the main thing is to get the fact. Sometimes a man uses an old matter of the same surname or the same name, and this is called fine and wide learning.

Duke Munjeong, answering the poems that Chief Ministers Choe and Geum had sung back and forth, wrote:

The precious thread came after the hawk was inscribed. The source of the immortals is the grandson who rode the carp.

This uses matters of the same surname.

The valley being the same, the oriole let go its hand. The years being different, the cassia divided its favor.

This records what is fine and gets the fact, for Choe and Geum were both heads of the list from the school of Duke Chungsuk.

Chief Minister Choe answered again:

The orchid in the yard is the same as the old fragrance. The bamboo shoot at the gate looks to the new grandson.

This sets forth his own case and gets the fact.

Playing with the brush, he chanted the last of the stars. Facing the war, he had the favor of the sun he loved.

This uses the same surname and gets the fact along with it.

Son Deukji of the Edict Office answered and sent up:

My losses are many, and my name has failed my gaining. My children are few, and my surname is shamed before the grandson.

This uses the letters of the same surname and the same name, and so sets forth his own case.

Ha Cheondan, the lecturer, came to see me and said, "Gang Irun chanted the egret and said, 'Flying, it cuts the waist of the green hill,' and he labored at it but could not get the matching line. Afterward Misu matched it and said, 'It takes its nest at the top of the tall tree,' and he put this into the Pahanjip. To carry on and patch a thing is a good work, but if a man has not got a fine line he should let it be. How could Misu show up his own shortness like that? You should cut it away."

I answered, "Among the things carried in the Pahanjip, that Jeong, the secretariat drafter, turned back when he had reached the city gate, and that Hwang Binbin came down from the tower wailing, seem to me too much. Yet I dare not lightly call wrong the words of one who woke before me. How much less, when 'it takes its nest at the tall tree' matches 'flying, it cuts the green hill' ripely. Why should I cut it?"

Ha was angry at being refused and went straight out. There were two or three guests sitting there at the time, and they chanted it over and tasted it a long while and said, "Let each of us match it." One said, "It plants its fist on the face of the green grass." Another, "It rises piercing the head of the green furrow." Another, "It dozes leaning on the shin of the red smartweed." Another, "It stands peering at the face of the clear pond." Another, "It cries piercing the side of the bright moon." And each claimed his own the better.

I teased them and said, "Those two old men, Gang and Yi — could they not have said such lines as yours?" The guests laughed aloud and broke up.

Jo Baekgi, the seungseon, was the son of Duke Munjeong. He passed the examination at the age of capping, and in a few years he wore the rhinoceros belt and became chin-ui envoy (襯衣使), and he passed through Cheongpung-hyeon. Jeong Jonghu, the gammu there, came forward on his knees, bowed low and said, "I was of the same roll (榜) as your father. Ill luck sank me on dry land, and now, near seventy, I have got this post at last."

Jo rose in surprise, left his seat, bowed twice, and made a poem and gave it to him:

Old man with the white head outside the gate in the blue gown, long ago you broke the cassia bough together with my father. The men of your roll have all become high ministers (卿相), and it is pitiful that at seventy you are here in Cheongpung.

Jo was then a little over twenty, and the words of his poem were already old.

When Choe Bosun, the chief minister, was a seongnang (省郞), the poor scholar (措大) Hwangbo Gwan went to call on him, and the chief minister showed him a scroll of poems on a painted pine. Hwangbo at once made a poem to the same rhymes and wrote it out after them:

One old man with a green beard has grown old on the cloudy peak. In ink and water his true face is handed down, and his name is Pine. His children and grandchildren are past counting and now fill the valley. Who is there to take the shade left by the grandee (大夫)?

The chief minister said in surprise, "This young man will surely be head of the list." Afterward he did indeed become second man (副元) in the Seonggyun examination, and before long he was also the first man on the golden roll (金榜).

In the middle month of spring in the year giyu I came to the old capital on business. It was all mounds and bare ground, and one lone paulownia had grown on the old site of Daegwanjeon and was already thick enough to take in both arms. When the sun went down a cuckoo cried on the western slope, and I could not keep back my tears.

Rising at dawn, I saw two quatrains on the wall, and I asked the clerk of the Jungsudogam who had made them. He answered that An Jin, the busa, had written them.

The first:

Ten thousand houses have gone to ash and not one is left. From what time has the paulownia grown on the hall? I am old, and if I see even a ten-thousandth of the rebuilding, the zither of the fragrant wind (薰風) shall be propped with you.

The second:

I did not think there would be a cuckoo in the imperial capital (皇都), crying at the moon all night and making men sad. Quietly I think of things gone by, and the tears run down, and at dawn, beside the lone paulownia, I chant the Shuli (黍離).

This poem has no line that carries the whole of it, but it sets out the matter fully and in detail, and it is worth grieving over.

I was jangseogi of Sangnak (上洛), and afterward I went back to that place as odu (遨頭). I opened up the hall where I lived so that the railing at the back looked over a small pond, and I named it Bullojeong (不勞亭), and I planted flowers and bamboo in front of it.

My term was taken over by another, and in the fourth year after, the spring of the year jeongmi, I wore the jade and went out to hold the Southeast Circuit, and I made my round through Sangnak. From the governor and the magistrates down to the many scholars of the country school, those who sent up songs and poems and ingye (引啓) stood filling the street side by side.

There were four great elders, seventy and eighty years old and more, who called themselves the Four Elders of Sangwon (尙原四老), and they sent up a short preface (引) together with four quatrains.

The first:

Blue sleeves before, red carriage curtains after — a rule as good as yours has not been heard of from of old. At the round gate where the grass is green a tiger bore her young, and it is handed down to this day and has become a fine tale.

The second:

By Bullojeong all the flowers are open, which you planted with your own hand when you held the district. After you went the light of spring was lonely, and even things without feeling are glad that his lordship (相公) has come.

I looked at it and said, "That a tiger carried her young on her back and crossed the river, the men of old thought fine. To bear young here and now is not good rule. They have only taken the emptiness of the prison (獄) and put it so."

From of old to now, lines that startle and stand out are not many. As in Caotang's (草堂) "On the river":

Of my work and merit I look often in the mirror. Of going forward and drawing back I lean alone on the tower.

And in "Vexation":

I roll up the blind, and there is only the white water. I lean on the armrest, and there too are the green hills.

Jin, the rectifier of omissions, said, "Du Zimei's poems, though they be of five letters, have a breath that swallows what lies beyond all shapes," and this must be what he meant by such lines. But in the couplet of "the white water" it is the use of the two letters "only (唯)" and "too (亦)" that is subtle, and a man who would taste that subtlety should chew it in the midst of vexation.

Choe Gijeong, the head of the list, in his "Songs of the four seasons":

Braving the snow the day lily comes back. Holding the frost the barley flower is there.

He picked up Caotang's words with his bare hand.

Master O Sejae, setting forth his own case:

In hill and hollow his lone loyalty is red. In talent and fame both his temples have turned white.

He quietly stole Caotang's grade.

My late grandfather, when he first entered the Golden Chamber (金閨) and went as envoy to Gangnam, left this written there:

Under the thatch of the cloudy sky the roots had barely joined. Among the mugwort of bank and marsh the root was cut of a sudden.

The poets said that this and Du Zimei's

The sun and moon are birds in a cage. Heaven and earth are duckweed on the water

are alike in the fine skill with which the lines are cut and polished. Someone said, "Lines of this grade are wonderful when cut into five letters. In seven they are not skillful."

Misu's Pahanjip says, "From of old to now, the way of cutting a line only Du Shaoling has got. A line like 'the sun and moon are in a cage,' when a man chants it and tastes it, is indeed like chewing sugarcane."

Jin, the rectifier of omissions, wrote:

Three years of a traveler's pillow, and the moon over the courtyard. Ten thousand li of a campaigner's coat, and the wind in grass and trees.

This does not come up to Caotang's

Three years within the flute, the moon of Guanshan. Before the soldiers of ten thousand lands, the wind in the grass and trees,

whose words are steep and whose meaning is deep.

Yi Yunbo, the court historian, loved Du Fu's poems all his life, and now and then he would chant and enjoy the one line "war and arms send off the old scholar," and he would say, "These words are firm and tight just as heaven made them. An ordinary talent could never draw them out."

Song Chang, the Hallim, asked, "Du of the Board of Works' 'Beyond the spring grass of Jiujiang, before the evening sails of the Three Gorges' — the words are easy and the meaning slips along. Might a man reach so far and draw that out?"

The court historian laughed and said, "Its words and meaning are open and far, and truly they are not for such as you to know. A line like 'The old wall still has the color of bamboo, the empty pavilion has the sound of pines of itself' is Du of the Board of Works' ordinary manner of speech, and how many now learn Du Fu's manner and cannot come near it. Only Xuetang's (雪堂)

I tilt my pillow, and how few petals of the fallen flowers are left. I shut the gate, and the new bamboo is a thousand stalks of itself

is the same in the clear, tight grade of its words, and it goes beyond him in the ease and refinement with which the meaning is laid down, and that is because of the words 'tilt my pillow' and 'shut the gate.'"

The court historian once stayed the night at Anhwasa with Yi, the Hallim 〔Duke Munsun〕, and left a poem there. The Hallim said:

Of rise and fall there is left an old tree. Through old times and new the cold water flows alone.

The court historian said, "Change 'alone' to 'still,' and it is a line of Caotang's."

Written on the wall of Gwijeongsa:

The dawn bell is wet beyond the clouds. The noon chant is dry at the edge of the sun.

This takes away Du of the Board of Works' line, "The dawn bell is wet beyond the clouds, the fine ground is smoke about the stone hall." To say that the dawn bell is wet may startle a man, but to say that the chant is dry is thin. Only the matching of the pair is close, that is all. The line "smoke about the stone hall" is of the kind whose breath swallows.

The Bohan (補閑) carries only the poems of this dynasty. But to speak of poetry and not reach Du Fu is like speaking of the learning of the scholars and not reaching Confucius, so I touch on him in brief at the end of the book.

To cut and temper a poem as Du of the Board of Works did is subtle indeed, subtle. But when a man whose hand is raw tries to cut, the more he labors the worse his clumsiness and roughness grow, and he only carves his liver and kidneys for nothing. How is that like following each one the vessel of his own talent and pouring the thing out as heaven made it, with no mark of grinding and filing?

Those who make a business of tempering nowadays all take Duke Jeongsuk for their master, and Yi Misu said, "The rule of the making of lines lies nowhere outside this. But if we let the men of old see it, how do we know they would not call it raw and clumsy?"

Writing takes the bold, the outstanding, the strong and the free for its breath; the firm, the steep, the clear and the swift for its bone; the upright, the straight, the fine and the detailed for its meaning; the ample, the wide and the unstinting for its words; and the plain, the antique, the towering and the hard for its body. To be penned in, raw, rough, trifling, weak, wild or shallow is a sickness.

As to poems: the new, the strange and the wonderful; the outstanding, the overflowing and the containing; the perilous, the odd and the excellent; the bold, the grand and the rich; the mighty, the deep, the antique and the fine — these are highest.

The fine, the choice, the firm and the tight; the fresh, the open, the clear and the steep; the floating, the outstanding, the firm and the straight; the wide, the ample, the harmonious and the generous; the shining, the strong and the close; the level, the plain, the high and the far; the ample, the easy, the even and the open; the clear, the delightful, the skillful and the fair — these come next.

The raw, the clumsy, the coarse and the thin; the halting, the rough, the cold and the dry; the shallow, the common, the wild and the mixed; the failing, the weak, the wanton and the slack — these are sicknesses.

Whoever grades a poem goes first by breath and bone and meaning and grade, and next by wording and by the rule of sound. Within one and the same meaning and grade, one couplet of the rhymed words may be better or worse, and it is rare that a man gets both together. So the words of grading are mixed as well, and not one thing.

The Rules of Poetry (詩格) says, "When the line is old and the letters are not common, when the reason is deep and the meaning is not mixed, when the talent runs free and the breath is not angry, when the words are plain and the matter is not dark — then at last a man enters into the Airs and the Sao (風騷)." These words are worth taking for a master.

Writings that hand down a command began with the Biming (畢命) and the Jiongming (冏命). Qin changed myeong (命) to je (制) and yeong (令) to jo (詔), and Han followed it. Of the six kinds of speech in the Zhouguan (周官) the third is go (誥), and when the Chunqiu was made the go came to an end. In the sixth year of Yuanshou a go was made for the first time. What is declared and shown to the great ministers is called gyo (敎), and that is a Qin institution. What records merit is called chaek (冊), and it is used in all enfeoffing and setting up. There is also the aechaek (哀冊), and the writing of it must be plain and orderly and solid.

Between Wei and Jin, Qi and Liang, those who spoke in the king's stead prized a floating and crowded style. When Tang arose, Yuan Zhen cut away the crowded words and set them level with the old teachings; Qi Huan took the old mo (謨) and go (誥) for his standard; Chang Gun was strong in the jeoseo (除書); Yang Yan was good at the deogeum (德音). All of them got the body of the jego (制誥).

The sago (詞誥) of this dynasty had its rule and measure from of old. In the reign of Yejong (睿王) it changed once, into the showy and the slack, and now it has changed a third time, and it is all crowded words and empty praise, and at the worst it comes near the praises of a player at his play. Duke Munui picked out some chapters of the inner and outer je (制) of Yejong's reign 〔Under the Tang institution the inner was the Hallim and the outer the Jungseo. In this dynasty the inner is the seongnang and the outer the Edict Office.〕 and named them the Bonjo Jego Gyusik (本朝制誥規式).

Under the Han institution the writings of the emperor were four: the chaek (冊), the je (制), the jo (詔) and the gyechik (誡勅). Under the Tang institution the words of the king were seven: the chaekseo, the jeseo, the chikseo 〔The several edicts of today, the bidap (批答) and the hoejo (回詔) and the like, are all chikseo.〕, the chikcheop and so on.

To appoint a duke or a chief minister and to command a general is called je (制), and white hemp was always used for it, though in the Zhenguan years yellow hemp was sometimes used. To spread it and make it known to the hundred officers is called seonma (宣麻).〔At the beginning of Yuanhe the draft was made on the even days, and on the odd days the hundred officers stood in their ranks below the Xuanzhengdian, and the secretariat drafter took up the je and spread it out, walking with a measured step.〕

In this dynasty, many as the appointments in one year may be, they are gathered and one hemp is spread. So the first and the last chapters of the jeseo are argued as a whole and run through them all, and the last chapter marks its head with the letters "oho (於戲)" or "hui (噫)". Only the several chapters in the middle record the merit and virtue of each of the lords, and so they differ from one another. The rules of tone (簾律) of each chapter agree with the two chapters at the head and the tail, and they are divided and bound to make one copy each of the gosin (告身) of the several lords, and this is the daegwan-go (大官誥).

The go of Tang used paper at first, or silk, and after Zhenguan they used figured damask. The gyoseo (敎書) also ran through them all, and each was attached at the head of its own binding. For the royal house, though the go be a great one, it is not spread and made known at the court assembly, and so it has no part in the seonma.

Under the old institution the chumil, the bogya, the paljwa 〔Wei and Sui and Tang all took the six ministers and the two bogya for the paljwa. Now the six ministers and the left and right sangi are taken for the paljwa.〕 and the supreme general all had the lesser gwango (官誥). Of late the chumilsa has begun to have a part in the seonma, and the go of the monk officials is set against that of the high ministers, with its own degrees of great and small.

The rules that Duke Munui drew up for drafting and signing the names of the Jungseo Munha, the Chongseong, the Yijo and the Byeongjo and of the officers in service are not the same as the yeongmun (令文), and the forms of the go of the three states, Song and Liao and Jin, that are kept in the Jungseo differ from one another as well. It is right to follow the yeongmun of the block-printed text.

On the first day of the first month, on the winter solstice, at the Palgwan, and on the birthday of the king, the military commissioners of the two frontier circuits and the several prefectures and protectorates send up tables of congratulation. These are sent down to the Jungseo, which grades them high and low and posts the roll (牓).

Long ago the Sangju mok sent up a Palgwan table that said:

"A leaf came flying of itself to the hall of Han, and I am ashamed that I lack the two ducks. Hearing the Shao (韶), they followed the dance in the courtyard of Shun, and I would be as one of the hundred beasts."

The men of that time counted it the line that carries the whole poem, but someone said that the two ducks are a matter of a county magistrate, and that to use it for a governor and a magistrate was quite wrong.

After the moving of the capital, the Palgwan table of the year sinchuk said:

"Caps and robes are gathered thick together, and the new capital is better yet than the old. Flute and pipe ring out clear, and the music of today is no different from the music of old."

The winter solstice table said:

"The virtue of wood being at its height, you lengthen once more the royal ground of the pine slope. Your kindness reaching even the grass and running deep, you have already spread the royal air of Hwasan."

The roll went out at one time, and both tables stood first.

Again the table for the first day of the first month said:

"The giheong (璣衡) has changed its degrees, and blessing gathers at the new capital on the Luo (洛水). Jade and silk hasten to the court, and the rite is greater than the old gathering at Tushan (塗山). And the royal wind spreads its harmony, and spring comes early to the farming and the silkworms of the eastern country. The holy sun lights what is far, and the snow of war among the Mongols of the north melts away."

The birthday table said:

"The brocade river winds about the wall, and it is a capital for ten thousand reigns of kings. A palace is opened on the embroidered ridge, and again we sing and blow for a festival of a thousand autumns."

The roll went out, and both tables stood first.

Choe Jongjun, Duke Seonsuk, was clear and upright by nature. From the time he took office at the age of capping he never once broke the law, and he rose to the seat of sijung and was chief minister for fifteen years, and his gate and his courtyard were clean as water. When his years came to the time for begging leave to retire, the king gave him an armrest and a staff and let him come to court no more, but he helped in the government as before.

The Sangju mok, in a letter (狀) of congratulation at the winter solstice, said:

"Rich and high in rank, you are yet open and free; calm and plain, you are yet firm and clear. No dust is mixed in your gate and your courtyard, and even your servants have become ice and jade. Your clear dignity does not grow angry, and yet all men look on you and fear you. Your bearing is splendid and full of ceremony, and yet it is as heaven made it, with nothing put on. You have held to one constancy to the end and have helped five courts into harmony, and since the day you took office you have never been called to account by the officers (有司). Four generations of state councillors have followed one upon another, yet none stands higher than the cicada cap of this day; ten years of a chief minister is a thing seldom heard of, and how much more the gift of the dove staff for your life long."

The duke gave special command that a letter be written in answer, and it said:

"Clean and upright and without private aim, loyal and straight — so I pledged myself. The purple gown has carried on the love left behind by the blue gown 〔That magistrate had once been the seogi and held this district.〕, and the bell pavilion (鈴閣) seeks the earlier traces of the chancellery (黃閣).〔This uses the matter of Duke Jeongsuk, which comes above.〕 What is heard of the sound of your rule weighs as much as the worth of your writing, and you do not cast off old friends. You have bent to send me your greeting, and the sweet plum of Sangnak comes with your envoy to the old man of Lüyetang (綠野堂), while the red peony of the Jungseo has no master and waits for the secretariat drafter (舍人) of the crape myrtle. It is right that you gather in the merit of making brocade and step straight into the place where the royal word is drawn out."

Now a chief minister's answer to a letter of congratulation is always a short note, and the writing does not run past a line or two. This answer was full to the last degree and out of the common, and there was not a governor of any other district who did not prick up his ears and count it an honor.

Kim Chang, the jeongdang, was the third man on the golden roll, and he became a chief guest in the school of Duke Jinyang, and day by day he made it his business to recommend worthy men and help the country. Before long he took the seat of a chief minister and had charge of the examinations for several years running. Han Yuseon, a jinsa of the same year as himself, passed the examination under him.

That winter solstice the letter of congratulation from the Sangju mok said:

"In white cloth you set your name in the Seonggyun, and the roll is the same roll, yet now he is your disciple. In the blue gown you were a guest at Jinyang, and lord and lord are chief ministers of the same time."

The tables and letters of congratulation from the many ju and mok nowadays are mostly copied and taken from old models, but in these tables and letters of the Sangju mok there is not a chapter or two drawn after the gourd. They are all of the matter in hand. Only the wording is not round and ripe, that is all.

For the saryuk (四六) of old the mirror is Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan, or else the three worthies of Song. One who cannot reach so far may take Duke Munyeol for his model, and that will do.

Duke Munsun, with his outstanding breath and his bold talent, drove his writing always wide and long. But when he came to the jeon (牋) and the pyo (表) he always gathered his words in and kept his chapters short, and he did not break the rules of tone.

Of late the Mongol emperor has been rebuking this country by edict, and the meaning of it was full and detailed in every article. The duke, making the table of reply, could not set out his answer in a chapter or two, and so here and there he scattered his words, yet the rules of tone still stood. After that those who made tables for the Mongols scattered their words as a matter of course, and it has spread even to those who decline an office and give thanks for it, and that is further still from the rule.

Now the reason that the jeon and the pyo are held to the four and the six and to tonal pairing is that a man may be modest and hold himself in and not go past his bounds, and what is counted better is that the words be plain and the meaning complete. Before Sui and Tang men spoke as they pleased and there were no rules of tone. From Tang downward there was pairing and there were rules of tone. Even to pair the lines and still be coarse and long is against the rite, and how much more to scatter the words and have no rules of tone. That is to be lacking in respect.

When I was young I once recited Duke Jeongsuk's examination-hall bu (賦) and wished to copy even his frown, and after I had passed the examination I admired the saryuk of Im Jongbi and Jeong Jisang and quietly wished to paint a tiger. And now, looking back at what I made before, it is all raw and rough, coarse and empty, and it looks rather like a dog. I am sorry I did not paint a swan after the three worthies and Duke Munyeol in those days. Though I might not have caught their true likeness, I should at least have come near a farmyard duck.

In the spring of the year jeongmi the country set up jinmusa (鎭撫使) of the third rank to guard against the raiding of the barbarians, and sent them out to three quarters. At that time Kim Jidae, the head of the list, was sirang of the Board of Punishments and became commissioner of the Southeast Circuit and deputy of the march as well.

On the first day of the first month he sent a letter congratulating the jinmusa, and it said:

"The gyein (鷄人) announces the dawn, and men race to paste up the cock of the house of Chu; the phoenix edict proclaims the spring, and it hurries the phoenix of the Xun family's pond by the Luo. I think with reverence that you hold in you the strategy of a hegemon and a king, and that to run through heaven and earth is what is called the scholar. The one house of Duke Munhwa and Duke Munheon has heaped up good, and there must be blessing; you passed over the saeop (司業) and the director of studies (司成) in six months, and there was never any difficulty in it. In the morning you had not yet laid down the scales of the seat where men are chosen, and in the evening you received the baton and the axe of the gate of war. Before the dignity and the name that hold down what lies outside, for two years the fishes and the birds have all known you; and for the work that has brought peace to the frontier the pipes and songs of ten thousand lands are drunk with the great peace."

Two days later the jeseo (除書) came, making the jinmusa the right bogya. Kim wrote another letter of congratulation, and it said:

"The wet-crow letters of the new edict have come a thousand li, and the words about bathing the phoenix in the earlier letter have proved true in three days. I think with reverence that your talent and your name cover the age, and that your virtue and your conduct are beyond all compare. In four courts of the chancellery (黃閣) the father was a chief minister and the son is a chief minister; on the red paper of seven generations the grandfather was a master of letters and the grandson is a master of letters. Early you trod the clear ranks and moved through the places of weight, and when you discoursed on the classics at the Bishui (璧水) the many old masters had nothing to say against it; and to wield the brush in the Okdang is a place that the poets of old could hardly reach. The sound of your rule is still in Sangnak, and your bupan (簿判) is still handed down in the Seowon (西垣). You have not left the honor of the two je, and at once you have climbed into the rank of the nine gyeong (九卿). You lifted the scales and chose the scholars, and in spring you opened the gate of peach and plum; you leaned on the baton and the axe and faced the war, and in summer you opened the longing of the lotus. The Son of Heaven has already forgotten to look to the south, and the people of the country wait one before another for a restoring. And indeed the reek of the barbarians has filled far and near, and all three quarters are in an uproar, yet you have given your orders amid talk and laughter and held them down and settled them, and one region alone is whole. My toil has already been borne by you alone, and it is right that you be rewarded out of turn. Moved again and again to the Geunban (芹泮), your ice-like titles were changed month by month and grew clearer; and entering next the Baekdae (栢臺), your frost-like law raised a wind and grew keener still.〔Within one year he moved in turn to libationer, director of studies, jidae and bogya.〕 Consider: a seat of weight should put virtue first, and how much more should a man out of the common not have to follow the order of rank. So you were given the rank of Gwangnok daebu and made to wear the title of Hallim academician besides. How should this be a congratulation only on the holy court's using men well? It is also a joy that this Way of ours goes greatly forward."

This letter pushes the praise past the fact in places, but the setting of its words and the ordering of its matter are fine and detailed. Only the pair "the pipes and songs of ten thousand lands" is a floating brag, and it is laughable.

The world sets the saryuk and the poem and the prose piece apart from one another, and some say, "This man is skilled in poems, that man in prose, that man in the saryuk, and no one can have them together." These are the words of men who have not entered the room of letters, each peeping through his own doorway at one stripe of it. Under a great hand there is nothing that cannot be done. How should there be a skill and a clumsiness set apart?

Besides, the saryuk did not come out of writing as a thing apart. In the time of Wei and Jin those who composed wished to make their writing long and yet easy to look at, so they divided the chapters and cut the lines and set fours and sixes side by side, and made of them the jeon and the pyo and the gye and the jang. This too is writing made into pairs. Afterward it changed into the tone patterns and the sound rules of the bu (賦), and it went about in the examination hall, for they wished to test a man's talent for speaking in the king's stead and for laying a memorial before him. As for speaking in the king's stead, even to scatter the words and have no pairs will do.

Men today make the saryuk a house apart. They copy and pick out the words of the men of old, as many as seven or eight letters, or even a dozen and more, and if they are lucky enough to get the pair they think themselves skilled. There is not a word in it that they strung together themselves, and how should there be any new meaning?

Misu put Im Jongbi's pair "above the Kunlun ridge" into the Pahanjip, but I do not take it.

Yu Hwa, who had passed the examination, was banished to a southern island, and he sent this to his friends in the capital:

"The wind rises on the Zhenze (震澤) and the rain comes into the Songjiang (松江), and the sail is full at first on the water that swells little by little. The snow holds the Languan (藍關) and the clouds lie across the Qinling (秦嶺), and the horse will not go forward — where is my house?"

The small boys who hold a brush delighted in that manner and copied it. From this the words grew like a creeping vine and were not fine or solid, and the meaning went round about and was not true or close.

And when it comes to those who enter the Hallim and write the saso (詞疏) to the Buddha and to Heaven, they use crowded words and coarse writing as a matter of course. And it is not the wording alone that is crowded and coarse. Some of them argue out of their own guessing about the recompense of the Buddha and the spirits, about the disasters and the good omens of the country, and about the aims of the barbarians, and they make a wide and long setting out of the matter and take it for their own talent. This is to cheat the Buddha and to deceive men. That the saso of the men of old always kept the words plain — was it that their talent fell short of the wide and the long? They cast off what floats and is empty and took what is sincere, and only spread and made known the reason of the thing. Let those who write take care.

Once, reading the collected works of Duke Munyeol, I came upon the stone inscription of State Preceptor Daegak. The master was a king's son, and he begged to leave the household life, and he went to Song and asked after the Way, and he got the dharma gates of five schools, the Xianshou, the Damo, the Tiantai, the Ci'en and the Nanshan. When he came to the banks of the Si (泗水) he made his bow at the Sengqie pagoda, and he made his bow to the image of Gwaneum at Tianzhusi, and both gave out light.

The Tianyou emperor of Liao in the north heard his name and sent him the whole canon and more than six thousand nine hundred rolls of the commentaries and subcommentaries of the several schools. Yunxu, the dharma master of Yanjing, and Siravati, the acarya (闍梨) of the kingdom of Gaochang, sent letters and dharma robes to greet him as well. Everyone who came as an envoy from Liao asked to see him, and when an envoy of this country went into Liao they always asked after the master's health, and men of Japan asked for the writing on his stone. So highly was he held in other countries.

With the strength that was left him the master studied outward things, the classics and the histories and the hundred schools, and he sought out the root and the stock of them all; and when he set his brush down of a sudden, his writing was level and plain and had a taste in it. Now that I have got a few of his poems and tasted them, what Duke Munyeol said of that levelness and plainness is true indeed.

Coming to Biraebangjang, he made his bow to the holy master Bodeok and wrote:

The teaching of the Nirvana and the Vaipulya I had handed to me from my master. That was the day the two sages laid the sutras open 〔Wonhyo and Uisang received the Nirvana Sutra and the Vimalakirti Sutra from the master.〕 and the time the high monk walked alone. He followed what came and left himself to north and south. He was in the Way, and he neither met nor followed. It is a pity that after the flying of the room the old country of Dongmyeong came to danger.〔The master was at first a monk of Ballyongsa in Goguryeo, and he made his room fly to Godaesan in Baekje. Afterward a spirit man appeared at Maryeong in Goguryeo and said to the people, "The day of your country's fall is not far off."〕

Written at Geumseogam:

The old moss is mottled like brocade. The lucky stones stand in a row like a folding screen. Now and then a high monk leans here and sleeps long and nourishes his spirit.

Written at Yongamwon:

I have trodden the last of the flowers and climbed the green hill. I linger and look at the view and would forget to go home. If in some other year I pay back the will I had before, I shall lie high in mist and glow and turn my back on the world.

State Preceptor Muaeji, Gyeeung, besides expounding the Way, also plied the blade in writing. Yejong welcomed him into the palace and pressed him hard to stay, and the master made a poem that said:

The holy command is stern and clear, and I could not decline it. The ape of the rocks and the crane of the pines take leave of Gangdong. For many years I was lucky and escaped the fish that swallows the bait. In one morning I have turned into a bird in a cage instead. My endless traveler's grief is the moon inside the palace. My dream of going home at times is the wind inside the valley. I do not know on what day I shall repay the king's favor and go back with bottle and staff and face the green peak again.

He went at once to Taebaeksan, chose a place to live, and meant to end his days there. The king sent an envoy again to call him, but for all the many edicts he would not take them.

State Preceptor Daegam, Tanyeon, had a fine and subtle hand with the brush, and the grade of his poems was high and plain, and in the places he passed through he left many verses.

His poem on Munsusa on Samgaksan says:

How empty and wide this one room is. The ten thousand ties are all at rest. The road goes through, piercing a crack in the rock. The spring leaks through the roots of the cloud and falls. The white moon hangs on the eave post. The cool wind stirs the woods and the hollows. Who will follow that reverend (上人), sit clear, and learn the true joy?

He made the Sawiuisong (四威儀頌) and sent it to Chan Master Jiechen of the Song court, and the master saw it and thought it strange and fine, and at once handed him robe and bowl from afar.

When the layman Ansin was living at Baegunam on Bigeumsan, the master once went to see him and wrote a poem on a board. Afterward someone stole this poem board and tried to carry it off, and had already reached the foot of the hill when a clerk of Hyeonpung guessed it beforehand and took it and kept it in the office. Whether the true hand of it is there still I do not know.

Chan Master Damsu of Gusan kept the friendship of a writing circle with the recluse Gwak Yeo, and with the two academicians Kim and Hong 〔Bucheol and Hong Gwan.〕, and others. At that time Yejong went to the Western Capital, and Gwak and Kim and Hong all followed the royal carriage, and only Damsu could not come to the traveling court. He had a poem, and he sent it and said:

Two academicians of the blue cloud, one old immortal of the white sun. Brushes side by side, you are below the royal progress. Skirts one behind another, you are in the escort. Rain on the willows of the Daedong. Wind on the peonies of Jangnak. In the eungje (應製) there must be many fine lines. Join the pieces together and send them by the post tube.

There was a monk called Mui (無已) who called himself Daehonja (大昏子). He lived hidden on Jirisan more than thirty years and never took off his one patched robe. Every winter and every summer he went into the hills and did not come out, and he rolled up the skin of his belly and tucked it into the rope of his belt. In spring and autumn he drummed on his belly and roamed the hills. He ate three or four mal a day, and when he sat down once he would sit ten days and more, and when he rose and walked he chanted the hill gathas clear and loud.

There were more than seventy hermitages on the four sides of the hill, and whenever he stayed at one of them he left one gatha behind.

His poem at Mujuam says:

This place has no dwelling in it from the first. What man raised this house? Only the one called Mui (無已) is left, and going and dwelling are both no hindrance to him.

The words seem thin and easy, but the meaning lodged in them is high and deep. He must have been of the kind of Hanshan and Shide.

At the beginning of the dynasty there was a scholar whose name is lost, who lived hidden on Jirisan. His hold on himself and his conduct were high and clean, and he did not cross over into the affairs of the world of men. The king heard of him and would have called him and received him, but he declined and said, "A subject outside knows nothing. A royal command cannot lightly be taken." And he shut his room and did not come out.

When they pushed the door open and looked in, there was only one couplet written on the wall:

One strip of silken command has come into the valley, and now I know my name has fallen into the world of men.

They traced him, and he had fled by the north window. He was a hidden man indeed.

When Jeong Gukgeom, the chamjeong, held Namwon, he went one day in spring round the districts under him and passed through Woncheondong. On the rock face to the left of the valley was a quatrain written large by Jeongsa (正思), a monk of Songnimsa:

Water before the rock of the old Buddha, you cry in grief and choke again. You must hate having come into the world of men and taken leave of the clouded hills forever.

The next day he and Yang Jeokjung, an old scholar, rode side by side to seek him out, and they became friends of hills and waters. Afterward, whenever he spoke of men of worth, he always called Jeongsa the dragon among the poet monks.

At Hoeamsa there is writing from the hand of State Preceptor Wongyeong, on the east and west walls of the south tower and between the little tower on the west side of the guest hall. A monk of the temple said:

"In the year gabo of the Dading years, when the Western Capital rose in revolt, an envoy of the Jurchen Jin (大金) came to this country. As the road to the northwest was blocked, to our sorrow, they were guided along the Chunju road, and the whole party came into the temple, and when they had made their bows to the images they gathered and looked at the writing. One of them said, 'Is this the brush of a noble man?' Another said, 'This is the writing of a man of the hills. The air of herbs and bamboo shoots is very much in it.' At that time the seungtong Jongnyeo was standing beside them and told them the truth of it, and both were glad that their words had hit the mark."

Then he wrote a poem on the wall:

Half the rich air of a king's son is left in it, and the herbs and bamboo shoots of a hill monk have left their traces too. Mad Zhang Xu and drunken Huaisu had no whole bone in them, and I am sorry after all that in that year he was allowed to shave his head.

Uijong kept close to sound and color and loved outings and pleasure. Mun Geukgyeom, Duke Chungsuk, was then jeong-eon (正言), and he sent up a memorial and remonstrated with him earnestly, but the king did not follow it. When the autumn of the year gyeong-in came, the military officers worked up a revolt and the royal carriage was moved to the south.

In the winter of the year gyesa the new public hall at the Yugu station in Jeongsan-hyeon was finished, and a workman was called to lay colors on the walls. The workman was a fine hand of that time, of the Bak family, and his given name is not handed down.〔The clerk of that station today told out the facts in full.〕

Between the west walls of the sleeping chamber he painted a man in white with a rush hat, riding a horse, going slowly along a hill road with the reins loose. The look of everything is bleak, and his young servants hold one another and walk on by turns. Men looked at it and none of them knew what the picture was.

Afterward Muuija of Songgwangsa, in the autumn of the year imo, was asked to lead more than a thousand of his company and was on his way to Seowon (西原) when he came to this station to pass the night, and he saw it and sighed a long while and said, "This is a picture of a remonstrating official leaving his country."

Then he wrote a poem on the wall:

What man painted this picture on the wall? The remonstrating official leaves his country, and the thing is all but done. Even a hill monk sees it once and is sad. How much more a scholar and official out on the road.

Ah. That the painter felt the thing that had gone before and drew this picture, and that the Chan master knew the old painting and left this poem — these are no different from the gentlemen of the old Airs and Odes (風雅).

Afterward two travelers passing by made poems to the same rhymes and wrote them on the wall:

Before the words about the bent chimney, no one planned early, and when the head is scorched, can regret overtake it? What man painted this going of the remonstrating official? A clear wind fills the wall and stirs up the idle man.

The next:

The white robe and the yellow belt are a picture of a remonstrating official. Is this Qu Yuan, or is it Weizi? He did not set the king's wrong straight and left his country for nothing, and there is no need to spend a scholar and official at the tip of a brush.

Chan Master Hyemun's poem on Cheonsusa says:

The road is long, and outside the gate men go north and south. The pines are old, and beside the rock the moon is of old times and new.

On Cheollyongsa:

The ground thaws, and the flowers make their meaning new. The ice melts, and the water gives its old sound.

On hemp shoes:

The green in the middle is like a tangle of indigo fields. The white at the edge is like a wall of snow going round.

The line about the pines and the rock and the moon is stolen from Jeong, the secretariat drafter: "On the head of the stone the pines are old, and one slice of moon." This is a seasoned thief, and no man can catch him.

Sujin, the seungtong of Gaetaesa, was wide in learning and fine in discernment, and when he took the royal command to look over what was right and wrong in the canon it was as if he had translated it himself from the first.

Ha Cheondan, the lecturer, made a poem and sent it to him with a bag of mustard seed. The master at once answered to the same rhymes and said:

The mustard seed is what our school argues out to the last, and it can swallow whole Mount Sumeru and the great sea. What was your meaning in sending this kindness to my sutra desk? I shall go to the thing in hand and speak of the deep and repay the Buddha's grace.

This is truly the talk of the Way from one seasoned in it. He is now the doseungtong of the Five Teachings (五敎).

Chungse, the jisik (知識), first set his name in the Golden Chamber (金閨) as second man (亞元) of the Namseong (南省), and then at once slipped away to Songgwangsa and cultivated the true.

When Duke Jinyang was jijusa (知奏事) he sent a letter with tea and incense and the Surangama Sutra by a jungsa (中使) who was going to Gangnam. As the envoy was about to return he asked for a letter to take back in answer to the duke, and the master said, "I have cut myself off from the world. Why should I make a letter and have it go back and forth?"

The envoy pressed him hard and gave him a poem besides, and the master at once answered to the same rhymes:

The thin crane lifts a foot in the quiet at the moon on the pine top. The idle cloud follows lightly the wind at the head of the pass. The face and the eyes within them are one and the same at a thousand li. Why turn a packet of words over anew?

In the end he did not answer by letter. This was truly a man of the Way who had taken leave of the world, and what he honored in his refinement was not like those who make the hills and woods a shortcut to the teaching of names (名敎) nowadays.

Master Tagyeon of Suseonsa was the son of a chief minister, and his hand with the brush was beyond compare. In the spring of the year gapjin he was coming back from the capital to Gangnam, and on the road he passed a village at the foot of Gyeryongsan and saw a magpie nesting in a tree. Its body was white, its breast red, its tail black.

Jangbok, a man of the village, said, "It is seven years since this magpie came and built its nest. Its young were eaten by the eagle owl year after year, and it never left off crying out its grief. Because that grief gathered in it, in the first year its head began to whiten, in the second year its head was white all over, and in the third year its whole body was white. This year it has been lucky and escaped that ill, and its tail is slowly coming back to black."

The master thought it strange and spoke of it to Master Cheonyeong of the same temple, and Cheonyeong said, "Ah. This is what is called a man with a bird's head."

Then he made a poem:

Resentment gathered in its head and made a snowy ridge. The stain of blood wet its breast and turned to a field of red. If he had not tormented the children of another house, the frosted feathers of the four seas would be black in a day.

Master Cheonyeong was held by Duke Jinyang and stayed with him, and he cut himself off from the ranks of the world. The Chan master was then a little over thirty.

Gwon Jeok, the academician, went into the Middle Court (中朝) and was chosen in the first class. The Son of Heaven thought well of him and gave him at once a place of honor, and had Yang Qiu write out his gwango (官誥), and dressed it with a jade roller and golden bells and bestowed it on him.

The next year he sent up a table asking to go home, and the emperor allowed it. As he was about to leave, a reader of faces said to him, "Your talent is high but your lot is thin. Your years will not pass forty, and your place will not pass the fourth rank. You had better recite a Mahayana sutra and so help out your reckoning and your salary."

The academician thought this true in his heart, and he set himself three days and recited the whole Lotus Sutra. The emperor called him forward and had him recite it, and there was not one letter wrong. Then the emperor thought well of it and wondered at it, and gave him one image of Gwaneum and one Lotus written pagoda (法華書塔).

The academician had two sons and one daughter, and the daughter was my grandmother. The image of Gwaneum was handed down in my grandfather's house, and the elder son, Lord Gwon Donnye, had the gwango. The second son became a monk and had the Lotus pagoda, and he died soon after, and this pagoda drifted on and no one knew that it was in the hands of a man outside the world.

When I was holding Sangnak I repaired Mimyeonsa (米麵社) anew and invited the company of Mandeoksan and held an assembly. One day at dusk an old monk came of a sudden to the gate carrying the Lotus pagoda and asked to be received, and said, "I am a grandson of Gwon, the academician, in the inner line, and I am of one kin with your lordship. Since this pagoda was handed to me I have kept it hidden a long while, and I have come because I heard that you had founded a Lotus Society (蓮社), and so I offer it."

The company had just then come to the Yeongjae (鈴齋), and Cheonin, the head of Mandeoksa, was among them. He heard of it and was startled, and wondered that such a thing had never been before, and then made a poem in praise of it:

When the Tathagata was long ago on Vulture Peak he spread the wonderful law of the lotus flower through three rounds. At that time the jeweled pagoda sprang up out of the ground, and how earnest and how devout was the praise of the old Buddha. What man drew out the samadhi of the eight kinds of brush and drew out the shape of the pagoda still finer and fairer? The sixty-nine thousand letters of that golden word each one wriggles and turns like an ant going round. One length of Exi (鵝溪) silk half a fathom high, and one seems to see it rise higher than the top of Mount Sumeru. I ask him where he got this thing, and how many years it has drifted here in the southern country. He answers that when the academician was studying in Song to the west he set three days aside and with his whole heart recited the seven chapters. Before the desk of the Jade Emperor he was heard reciting for a trial, and the sound of it was clear as poured and running water. The thought was to hear it and bear witness together with Dabo (多寶), and so the pagoda was given in favor, in praise of his worth. Once the academician had gone up and become an immortal it was set in a monk's house and there was no one to hand it on. Ah, your lordship, it came of itself and by chance, and this thing is so wild and strange that no one can explain it. Under the tree they felt for the ring and knew Yangzi (羊子); in the jar they looked for the painting and knew Chan Master Yong. How should we know that the man of today is the man of long ago, and that an old vow unfulfilled still holds him bound? And so he believes in this law more deeply yet and wishes the Lotus Society founded and its merit made whole. The dragons and the heavens too brought forth a glad heart, and by a numinous gift the old thing has come back. From of old what is outside is not mine. There is a true master of it who holds that power alone. What joy is there in getting, what grief in losing? What passes before the eye changes like wind and smoke. Look, this pagoda belongs somewhere of its own, and though the earth turn and the heaven wheel it has never moved.

The master was chosen in the jinsa examination at seventeen and entered the Hyeon-gwan (賢關) at once, and in the winter of that year he was tested in the arts and was the first student. Then he took leave of the world and threw himself into Mandeoksa and shaved his head, and his conduct in the Way went forward day by day, and he became the rule of a house of his own.

Yun Uil, the lecturer, said, "There are three grades in the poems of the monks. When the words stray into the gatha manner of the sutras and the treatises, it is called the bean-soup stain (豆湯痕). When a man likes to make raw and sour words, it is called the drop of sasu (捨水滴) 〔Among the monks, the water in which the bowl is washed after a meal is called sasu.〕. When the standing of the words is cold and dry, it is called the air of herbs and bamboo shoots (蔬笋氣)."

Siui, the seungtong of Seobaeksa, was the younger brother of Yi Yunbo, the court historian, and his elder brother granted that he could write poems. He once stayed at Gwijeongsa, and there was a potter on the temple's farm. The governor of Anyung asked for an earthen wine jar and a crock, and the master sent him a poem and said:

These two things, their bodies are earthenware. Earth is their father, and fire is their mother. They keep good terms with Master Yeast and serve as vessels, and there is nothing they cannot do. They are firm and straight, and not slippery like the Chiyi (鴟夷). Full, they sit; hungry, they lie down. In their empty, swelling bellies they hold the sages and the worthies. A man may open his heart with them all his life. They should serve a bold gentleman on a brocade mat. Why would they follow me to the death? A hill monk has enough in the reckoning of one gourd dipper, and there is no place to use them, so why should I borrow you? Besides, the ban on wine grows stricter by the day, and there is nothing to fill your hunger with. I would set out boiled tea and serve you with that, but I fear you are not used to it and it will not pass your throat. Between heaven and earth you are all mouth and belly, and it is a precious thing that you do not cast me off. I hear that the governor of Yungseong (戎城) has come and that ten thousand houses water at the mouth and drink the new teaching. Surely he pours out his sweet kindness and comforts the thirst of the people, and in the leisure of his office he gladdens his guests and tips the jade cup. Ah, you were lucky to be born when the world is without trouble. Go, and be with the worthy governor, and drink, and what of it, and be drunk with the joy of the great peace and long at ease.

Even if Lord Yun were shown this poem, he would surely have no fault to find of the three grades.

Jin, the rectifier of omissions, passed west of Chiak on the king's business. The shade of the pines and the firs was thick, and the water and the rocks were deep and strange, and he loved it in his heart and went into the valley, and there were two or three thatched houses showing faintly among the trees. An old monk was sitting with a boy on a stone by the stream. Jin got down from his horse and spoke with him, and his air and his bearing were not common. They sat down facing each other at last, and Jin saw a coiled pine painted on a paper fan, and he took the fan and wrote on the back of it:

The old monk keeps the green-bearded elder company forever. Why has he moved the true shape again into the round of a fan?

The monk at once answered to the same rhymes:

The spring wind does not come to the ridge of Emei, and the flood dragon that beats the ground has made a green round.

Jin was startled, and he sighed and gave in to him. The monk gave him ten rhymes besides, and the words and the meaning were all clear and outstanding. What man he was no one knows.

Gonggong, a monk of the samjung rank (三重), was not strict in his nature. He loved poems and wine, and he never lived away from the capital. Even in his late years he liked to roam with young men, and dead drunk he would chant and mock the flowers and make sport of the grass, and let himself go.

He used to pass through Pocheon, and he left a poem there in praise of the stone Maitreya:

Golden and towering, a body of sixteen feet, standing alone on the green hill, how many springs have you passed? I have come and bowed my head, and why do you say nothing? We cultivated together in a former age, and you are an old friend.

Afterward Yu Seok, the head of the list, passed by as commissioner of the Middle Circuit, and he saw it, and wrote gladly in the Maitreya's stead:

Above the waist the shape of a monk, below the body of a worldling. Your eyes are lost in the spring among the peaches and plums of Jangan. Do not say we cultivated good together in a former age. In our company there has never been a man who broke the precepts.

Gonggong heard of it and made a neat poem of mockery and sent it up to Chief Minister Choe:

Long ago I passed the Pocheonwon and idly left one poem there. There was a Maitreya full of talk who answered in sport and made the envoy doubt me.

The lord doubled over with laughter.〔In common speech a man of many words is called dadam (多談).〕

Wol, the chief seat (首座) of the Hwaeom, besides his other work went deep into writing as well, and a draft collection of his is handed about among the scholars. He once compiled the Haedong Goseungjeon.

At that time Yi Yunbo, the donggwan, said, "There is a man called Mukhaengja (默行者). His clan is not known, and his age is about fifty. Sometimes he shaves his head and sometimes he is an ascetic (頭陀). He does not recite the sutras and does not bow to the Buddha, and all day long he sits at ease with his eyes shut. If a man comes to greet him, high or low, he does not raise his eyes and look again, and if he is asked his name he does not answer, and if he is asked where he has come from he does not answer either. So they named him Mukhaengja, and he lives in a side building of Gwijeongsa."

I happened to be at Guseong (龜城) at that time, and Jonsun, a man of the Way, told me of him.

"Once in a winter month he spread one sitting mat and wore one patched robe, and there was neither nit nor louse in the patchwork, and he sat on a frozen ondol floor and no sign of cold showed on him. When younger men learning the Way came with their books and asked about their doubts, there was nothing he did not open out and explain to them in detail.

"In the depth of the great cold we feared he would freeze, so we watched for a time when he was out and sent a room servant to light a bundle of brushwood quickly and warm his floor and come away. The practitioner came and saw it, and with no sign of gladness or of anger he went slowly out of the door, gathered gravel, blocked the fire hole, worked the ash into clay and daubed the cracks, and went up and sat at ease as before. From then on we sent no one to warm it again.

"At the time of the jae (齋) he would eat herbs and use no sauce, and he did not forbid himself to eat after noon either. If it came his way he ate, and sometimes he did not eat for seven or eight days. He said of himself, 'Wherever there is a holy trace on a famous hill, there is none I have not gone and seen.' I went to see him, but we did not exchange a word."

Afterward, in the tenth month of the winter of the year eulchuk, I went about Guramsa, and a monk of the temple said, "Lately Mukhaengja came and climbed Jeonam (鸇巖) and delighted in it, and he went on to a stone cave and put up one small hermitage. He carried the stones himself and built the steps and opened a new stone path. From the foot of the hill up to the cave he laid more than three hundred courses, and not one stone shakes. Now and then when he hears the drum for the meal he comes down and eats, and sometimes he does not come down for ten days and more."

So I went to greet him, and there was a chant in seven-letter lines on a flat stone, made by the practitioner, and its words touched a good deal on the matters of the immortals.

In the year gyeong-o I was sent to Jeongyung (定戎) on a divided commission and rode the post horses, and I came to Guseong again, and I asked where the practitioner was now. A man of the town said:

"A while ago he went to Munam on Samgaksan in Bongju and lives there. In a summer month of last year, when he was staying at Guramsa, he said to the monks of the temple, 'Spirits are coming from the north and gathering at this town,' and then he came down the hill and went into the town, and he rode along the top of the wall and went round and out of the town, and everyone saw him. Afterward there were goblin fires that lay down by day and rose at dusk, and their color was blue and they were not all of a size. Some went into men's houses, some gathered in the garden trees, some flew in the air. The townsmen beat on things that ring to make a noise and kept watch at night without sleeping, and it went on like that for some days before it stopped at last."

My wife and children had come down and were in that town at the time, and I asked them, and it was indeed so.

Afterward a monk named Ikbun came and told me, "Lately I went to Samgaksan and saw the practitioner, and he was well and had not the least illness. The village people nearby were afraid he would go away, and together they had mended and made whole the thatched house he lived in, and morning and evening they served and guarded him. When I was about to take my leave, the practitioner said to me,

'Those who cultivate do not, as a rule, change their will for cold and hardship. But cultivation nowadays must have high towers and lofty halls to shelter its company, and fine food and delicate clothes to serve its body. They go in and out of the gates of the high ministers and the scholar officials and urge them to build temples, and they call the breeding of interest a great gaining of blessing, and so they butcher the common people. Where is their being men who cultivate? Work at it, and do not be slack.'

"I have kept it in my heart."

The words of the donggwan were such, and so I have made this account and patched what the Seungsa (僧史) left out.

Jarim, a monk of Chiryangsa, was foolish past telling. He had come to play in the capital, and on the way back he was crossing the Imjin when in midstream he saw a novice with a white face who had got into another boat and was crossing ahead of him, and he was quietly glad in his heart. As the boats came in he reckoned that he would not reach him, and without seeing how far ahead the other was he sprang up to leap across, and was thrown into the river and went under.

The men who had gone with him went back and reported him dead, and his disciples held a jae and prayed him on his way. When three times seven days had passed, one evening Jarim came of a sudden. His disciples wondered and asked him, and Jarim said, "I sank to the bottom and came up again, and a boat happened to pass and a man on the boat pulled me out and saved me. When I was out I asked where the novice had gone, and I followed him as far as Gyeseongsa on Samgaksan, and I went in and saw him and was so glad that I could not bear to leave him, and I stayed twenty days and came back." Those who heard it doubled over with laughter.

Again, on a moonlit night a toad came out into the yard and the monks gathered to look at it, and Jarim came up behind them and said, "What sort of creature is this?" They lied to him and said, "There is no such creature in this land. Someone lately bought it from the house of a Song merchant and meant to keep it, and set it loose here. It looks like a toad, but it is not one. Will you buy it, master, and keep it, and enjoy it?" Jarim traded a silver bowl for it.

One of his attendants said, "This is a toad. Why are you buying it?" Jarim said, "Do not block me with foolish talk." And he wrapped it in mugwort and went off.

Jeong Jajik, the sirang, heard of it and made a poem:

The fashion of the world of late honors the cunning and the sly, and heaven has taught the last degree of foolishness and shown it to the world of men. That he bought a toad and threw it in the water is laughable, but the will that loved a friend and made light of goods is worth looking at.

In Inju (麟州) there was a singing girl named Baengnyeon, the White Lotus (白蓮), and Duke Jeongsuk, passing through that district as an envoy, would always look back at her. After they parted he sent her a poem:

I send word by one slice of cloud flying north: you will surely pass by the peak of Great Hua. If on the head of the peak you see the lotus of the Yujing (玉井), tell her of my face wasting away with longing.

Afterward he became military commissioner, and the girl sent his poem up to him. The lord gave her another quatrain:

South of the wall and north of the wall the green lies fold on fold, and one might think it the twelve peaks of Wushan. With white hair I cannot make the dream of cloud and rain, and that jade face has taken nothing at all from the look of spring.

Yi Misu teased the governor of Yongman for his longing after the girl Baengnyeon:

The wind is warm and the orioles coax by the traveler's road, and a thousand reds and a hundred purples strive to be fair. The governor is weary of the noise of the spring light instead, and looks alone to the autumn pond and delights in the white lotus.

Yi's poem is splendid and fair, but it does not come up to the clear grace of Kim's.

In the third year of Cheng'an, the year muo, Yi Inbo, the sacheon-gam, was jegosa (祭吿使) of the Gyeongju circuit, and when he had finished sacrificing at the hills and rivers all round and was about to go back, he came at dusk to Buseoksa, and a monk met him and led him into the guest hall. It was bleak and there was no one at his side, and of a sudden a woman showed for a moment in the corridor. The gam thought she was a singing girl sent by the governor of some nearby district, and did not wonder at it.

After a little she came lightly to the foot of the steps and bowed, and the bending and the rising of her were not much like a singing girl's. When she had bowed she came up the steps and went straight into the room, and looking at her closely he saw that she was not one who eats food cooked by fire. The gam thought it strange, but her form and her color were beyond any in the world, and he could not bring himself to turn her away.

So he gathered his robe and went out of the door and looked round about him, and there was only one old well, and that was strange. He sat down again, startled.

After a long while a novice came bearing the word of the head of the temple and said, "The great gam has been much wearied, and happily he is now here. Will he please come to the jangsil (丈室), and I will make bold to serve him tea?" The gam went, having no choice, and pressed the woman to come with him, but she twice and three times firmly declined and slipped out of the door.

The gam shared a warm pleasure with the head of the temple, and when the dark of the night came they broke up and he went back. Before long the woman of before came again. The gam drew a little nearer to her, and the woman said, "The great officer already knows that I am not a human being, so do not doubt me. Where I live is not far from here, and I quietly admired your high nature, and that is all why I came." Her answers were quick and clever and yet very much at ease.

At last they shared a quilt and left nothing wanting of their winding together, and he stayed three days and came out.

He stopped at a post station to spend the night, and the woman of before came drifting in. The gam said, "You have gone already. Why have you come again?" The woman said, "In my belly there is one child of yours, and I have come to beg for one more." And she served his bed as before, and toward dawn she took her leave, and the feeling of cloud and the meaning of rain were much entwined between them.

Going on, he came into Heungju and was about to stay the night, and the woman came in again. The gam thought to himself that if he met her with their old love it might be a trouble afterward, and in the end he faced her and took no notice of her. The woman stared at him a long while, and then flared up and changed her color and said, "Very good. Afterward you shall surely not see me again."

She went straight out of the door, and a whirlwind rolled up the ground and struck and broke one leaf of a door between the halls and cut off the tops of the trees as it went, as if they had been cut with an axe.

To argue it in brief: the gam already knew that she was not human. Why then did he at once share his pleasure with her and leave nothing wanting of their winding together? For a man to have dealings with a spirit thing, even to a child in the belly — how is the strangeness and the wildness of it so great?

Han Yu (韓子) said, "That which has neither shape nor sound is a spirit. When a man goes against heaven, or breaks with the people, or is at odds with things, or turns against the bonds of men, and so is felt by things, then a spirit lodges in a shape or leans on a sound and answers him, and all of it is the people's own doing. That being so, whoever is bewitched by a spirit is deceiving himself."

On Byeonsan there was an old monk (老宿), and he told this of himself.

Long ago he heard that the people of Gochang-hyeon were holding a Lantern Assembly, and he went to see it. There was a young man there who was out of the common, and he asked those about him, and they all said they did not know whose son he was.

When it broke up and the young man went, he followed after him and came to the foot of a hill, and the young man said, "Do not follow me. Where I live is mean and not fit for you to stay the night." The monk said, "The day is late. Where should I go?" The young man said, "Since we have come this far together, I cannot decline on the ground that it is out of the way and mean."

They went, and an old woman came out to meet them and said, "Tut, child. If your two brothers see this, will this master not be their meal?" The monk saw then that the place was a tiger's den and would have gone out, but the old woman said, "My two sons are already coming back. If you force your way out you will surely be in danger." And she took hold of him and brought him in.

The young man said, "I am much afraid. Please put the master behind my mother."

Before long two tigers came in with one rabbit. The old woman, wishing them not to stay long, said, "I and you together have one rabbit. How shall that cure our hunger? Go quickly, go far, and look for food again."

The tigers made the speech of men and answered, "Our mother has food. Why should we look for more?" And they went out. After a long while they came back and said, "We begged and prayed of the master of the hill and each of us has got food, and our little sister may come along too. How should we bear our hunger and make ourselves suffer?" And they went out again.

Before long there was one who came and called out and said, "Because your sons and your daughter have been loitering about the villages of the district, the master's command is that they be punished. Tomorrow morning they must go into the pitfall of Gochang-hyeon and die."

The young man said, "It is the master's command, and I cannot flee it. That I have met you now is also my lot. When I have gone into the pitfall a crowd will come and hold me down, and I fear I shall not be able to keep from anger. You should come and tell the crowd to draw back, and say, 'I can kill it by myself,' and come forward with a short spear. That I may say one word and die is your kindness to me."

The next morning he came to the county and heard that there was a tiger in the pitfall. The monk went and did as he had been told and drove the crowd back and went straight forward with a short spear, and the tiger said, "I shall go to such a village, to such a house, and be born there as a boy. When I am twelve or thirteen I shall come to see you; shave my head and carry me over." And it took the blade and drove it through its own breast and died.

Fifteen years later the monk chanced to come out of the valley gate and saw a boy bowing at the left of the road. He asked him, and the boy said, "I am the boy of such a village." The monk remembered the words of the tiger in the pitfall of that other day, and he shaved his head and made him a novice. He was very quick and clever and much to be loved, and then of a sudden he ran off, and no one knew where he had gone.

Afterward it was heard that a master of Ireomsa had cultivated a secret spell and was bringing men under him day by day with the power of gaji (加持力), and that he had taken a command and gone to a hermitage (蘭若) within the capital region. The monk went and looked, and it was the novice of those days.

This tale is very strange and wild. It is said in the world that among the prophecies (讖) there is a saying of "the tiger monk (虎僧)," and that the master of Ireomsa alone answers to it. But this too is hard to lean on.

North of Gwanghwa-hyeon there is a water-shield pond, and those who gathered the water shield were harmed there now and then. A man of the people named Geumdong (今同) took a sickle and leapt in, and he reached the bottom and felt about, and he came into a room that was dry and had no water in it, and it was bright, much like a house with beams, so that a man could count the sand and the stones.

He saw a heap swelling up and pushed it apart, and there was a clam as big as a fist. He picked it up and came out and threw it on a field by the pond, and he was going in again to pick up more when of a sudden he heard a clanging on the bank. He sprang out with his body, and thunder and rain broke out fiercely. At last he was afraid and swung his sickle about and went away.

Yang Gugwon, a jinsa, saw the man himself and heard his words and told them about, and everyone thought it strange. One poor scholar (措大) who was sitting at the end of the room laughed at it, and made a quatrain and gave it to Yang, the jinsa:

The den of the flood dragon is in the blue sea, and whether it is in a water-shield pond too, no one knows. You were able to feel along the bottom and would have done away with the harm. Why then did you come back afraid on level ground?

This poor scholar had will and constancy in him, and he was not shaken by floating strangeness. What office he came to afterward is not known.

When Siui, the seungtong of Seobaeksa, was still a student, he lodged at Bongnyeongsa with Bak Inhu, a jinsa, and two or three others. At night they were drinking and joining lines, when of a sudden a chanting voice came from outside the window: "The night is deep, and I shall dismiss the guests inside the bottle." The voice was harsh, and everyone in the room felt as though a hand had taken their hair and lifted it.

Again, there was a scholar named Yi Sik who was going to Bulgapsa, and on the road he met an old man of a large and imposing frame. They went a few li together, whistling and chanting, and their minds met and they were very glad. When they came to the side of the temple and the old man was about to leave him and go into the hills, he chanted:

The pine wind blows the long day through, bleak and bleak and never at an end. Beneath it the poria root has been there a thousand ages, and the woodcutters who come and go have never known.

I once tasted that poem. The meaning of it is clear and graceful, but it does not come up to Yudokgun (幽獨君). Still, these too are words from beyond the dust.

Again, a monk of Beopcheonsa whose name is lost was reading the poems of Dongpo at night in a tower. Of a sudden someone knocked at the door, and he opened it and looked, and there was one man in a cap and one man with his hair loose. As though they had known him long they took his hand and climbed the tower with him.

The man in the cap said, "The new moon is one eyebrow, and high enough to be seen." The monk chanted under his breath a long while, and the man with loose hair said, "Why do you not speak?" — "My old friend is a thousand li away, and it is hard to set a time." They gave and answered a long while, and then of a sudden they were not there.

Seobaek is a master of the Hwaeom school, and he told this matter very fully. Yet the master is by nature one who does not go round about and does not talk of spirits.

Jawon, the son of Yu Gonggi who had passed the examination, could join lines at five years old. Duke Jinyang called him in to see him and drew the letter "ro (爐)," and he answered the command at once and said, "Phoenix charcoal (鳳炭) is heaped in the brazier, and the house of a marquis is warm." The duke thought well of it and gave him silks, and asked him what he wished, and he said, "I wish you would grant an office to my father." So he was made magistrate of Boju (甫州). Afterward the boy threw himself into Seonwonsa and shaved his head, and his dharma name was Yeosu (汝髓), and he died young.

Dongin-hong (動人紅) was a singing girl of Paengwon, and she knew a good deal of writing. A byeongma bundo (分道) was playing go with the governor, and as his wine of the day before had not yet worn off he said, "The doho (都護) is drunk with a thousand cups of Bakju (博州) wine and cannot tell east from west." Dongin-hong was standing by and said, "The governor is in the dark over one board of go with the camps divided, and does not know the living from the dead."

She once followed a student, wishing to learn the prose of Han Yu, and the student said, "If you cannot make a poem I will not teach you." So she made eight rhymes and said:

Wine is bought, and the silk skirt comes loose. You are called, and the jade hand waves.

And she gave this to Jo, the geoja:

I have been lucky enough to meet the gathering on the Zhen and the Wei. What if I give you a peony?

Setting forth her own case, she said:

Between a singing girl and a woman of good family, how much space is there in the heart? Pity the constancy of the Bozhou (栢舟). She swore of herself that dying she would not turn to another.

The meaning of what she set forth of herself seems upright and fierce.

When Song Gukcheom, the academician, was in the chalwon (察院), he went out to help at the yungmak (戎幕) of the northwest. In the house of the district singing girls of Yongseong there was one named Udol (于咄), who was always favored by the envoys and the guests. At the drinking she sang and answered well and made merry with them all, and only Song would not go about with her. So the girl made a poem and sent it up to him:

I have long known that the bowels of Guangping (廣平) are iron and hard, and I have no mind to share a pillow and sleep. I ask only that for one night, at a table of poems and wine, I may help you chant the wind and the moon and tie a sweet bond.

The preface to the Guoshi bu (國史補) of Li Zhao of Tang says, "Whatever sets out the spirits, and whatever comes near the bed curtains, I have put away." And Lord Ouyang, making the Guitian lu, took Li Zhao's words for his rule. This is the common way of the scholars in composing, now as of old.

This book of mine does not make bold to add to the light of the country and widen it with fine writing, nor is it a composing and recording of what this great court has left behind. I have simply gathered what was over from my carving and engraving, to serve for laughter and talk. So in the last chapter I have set down a few passages of wanton and strange matters, that new men who study hard may roam a little and rest a little. There is something let loose in it, and yet there is a mirror and a warning within those few letters. Let the reader look at it closely.