Song of Making a Drum of the Belly — Teasing a Friend for Drinking Alone腹皷歌。戱友人獨飮。
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 · 1 passages · 161 Chinese characters · reading time 1.5 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 10 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.
Have you not seen the sons of noble houses feasting in splendid halls,
striking bells and beating drums, with strings and pipes sounding between?
The master west of the city alone is not like that:
drunk, he sings aloud and drums upon his great belly.
Within it there is room to hold several hundred men,
and it could store three thousand bushels of wine besides.
He gets rice from rich fields and brews a thick wine,
and in a few days its fragrance comes wafting thick and strong.
Why should he press it in a frame to squeeze out the clear liquor?
He takes the kerchief from his head and strains it himself.
At one draught he tips off a cup of such a size,
with pungent garlic or rank meat for a relish.
Making a leather drum of his belly and mallets of his hands,
boom, boom — the sound runs on the whole day long.
The poor old man of Longxi (隴西) gets but little wine,
and bows his head in his low house like a crane stooping to peck.
His belly is like a coconut, yet even so he cannot fill it,
and sees only clover heaped on a green platter.
He puts in a little water and gruel, and at once it is empty again,
just as a kicked ball, when the air goes out, shrivels of itself once more.
How could the sound of starved bowels howling like thunder
answer the master's belly-drumming tune of a time of peace?