Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 4
Cutting the Stirrups and Leaving the Whip截鐙留鞭
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 4 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.
遺事曰。姚元崇牧荊州。三年受代。吏民泣。擁馬遮首不使去。皆截留鞭鐙。新牧奏之。褒詔美之。賜金一千兩。
The Yishi says: When Yao Yuanchong had governed Jingzhou (荊州) three years and was replaced by his successor, the clerks and the people wept, held his horse and blocked its head so that he could not go, and all cut off their whips and stirrups and left them behind. When the new governor reported this, the Emperor issued an edict of praise and bestowed a thousand taels of gold.
良牧臨民似母慈。一方如仰乳霑滋。留鞭截鐙猶爲淺。孃去兒留得不悲。
A worthy governor came before the people as tenderly as a mother, and a whole region seemed to look up as to one who nursed it at the breast. To leave the whip and cut the stirrup is still a shallow thing: when the mother goes and the child is left, how should it not be sad?