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Text praying for rain to the city god, at Gyeyang桂陽祈雨城隍文

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 · 229 Chinese characters · reading time 2.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 37 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.

云云。予以無能。尹于玆土。本是書生。不閑綏撫。其所弛張。動與民忤。一方旱暵。職予之故。凡有罪責。寧丁我軀。生民何知。遭此旱枯。我行于野。省彼稻苗。十分八九。大扺皆焦。黏塊而仆。如屈針腰。朝夕不雨。卽無今秋。我慙且嘆。有泚如流。拱手以立。甘俟天劉。然主郡者神。牧民者吏。郡之遭旱。雖吏之恥。民若荐飢。神亦乏祀。況吏之居郡。但三年耳。神食兹邑。無有窮已。斯民暴殄。神復何恃。憂民之心。與吏孰至。若雲雨之權。非神所專。以吏之訴。傳訴于天。天豈茫然而不矜憐。惟冀大王。馭氣寥廓。馳訴于大微紫極。促雷鞭與電策。賜三日之澤。潤我黍稷。俾克有穫。則吏之報於神。亦固其職。言不可食。

And so forth.

Incapable as I am, I have become the magistrate of this land. I am a man who only read books, and I am unpracticed in soothing the people. When my loosening and my tightening move, they go against the people's will. That one region is in drought is wholly my fault. If there is anything to be punished, let it be sent down upon my own body instead. What do the people know, that they should meet with this drought?

I went out into the fields and looked at the rice shoots, and eight or nine in ten were nearly all scorched. They clung to the clods and lay fallen, bent like the waist of a needle. If rain does not come by morning or by evening, there will be no autumn this year. I am ashamed and I sigh, and the sweat runs off me as though it flowed. I stand with my hands joined and wait, resigned, for Heaven to cut me down.

Yet it is the god who presides over the district, and the official who governs the people. That the district has met with drought may be the official's shame, but if the people starve again and again the god's sacrifices too are cut off. How much more so when an official is in a district for only three years, while the god partakes in this district without end. If these people are all gone, in what then will the god trust? In the heart that worries for the people, which of the two is the more urgent?

If the authority to command cloud and rain is not something the god can exercise alone, then carry the official's plea up to Heaven and make report of it. How should Heaven stay far off, feigning ignorance, and not take pity? I beg only this: that the Great King drive his energy and rise to the broad sky, hurry to the Taemi Palace and the Jami Palace and make report, and press on the whip of thunder and the whip of lightning, and send down three days of rain. Wet our millet and our panic grass, so that we may reap them. If you do so, the official's repaying of the god is also his duty, and I shall not swallow these words.

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