Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 5

My child Sambaek drinks wine兒三百飮酒

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 2 passages · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 5 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.

汝今乳齒已傾觴。心恐年來必腐腸。莫學乃翁長醉倒。一生人導太顚狂。

You tip the cup already with your milk teeth, and I fear in my heart that in a few years your bowels will surely rot. Do not learn from your father, who is forever drunk and falling over; all his life long people have taken him for far too mad.

一世誤身全是酒。汝今好飮又何哉。命名三百吾方悔。恐爾日傾三百杯。

What has ruined my body all this one lifetime is wine, every bit of it. And now you too are fond of drinking — what then is to be done? I now repent of having named you Sambaek, for I fear you will tip three hundred cups a day.