country with drought and other calamities.

[Footnote 3: "Ho! Tanabata! if you hurry too much, you will tumble
down!"]

* * * * *

The festival of Tanabata was first celebrated in Japan on the seventh
day of the seventh month of Tomby[=o] Sh[=o]h[=o] (A.D. 755). Perhaps
the Chinese origin of the Tanabata divinities accounts for the fact
that their public worship was at no time represented by many temples.

I have been able to find record of only one temple to them, called
Tanabata-jinja, which was situated at a village called Hoshiaimura,
in the province of Owari, and surrounded by a grove called
Tanabata-mori.[4]

[Footnote 4: There is no mention, however, of any such village in any
modern directory.]

Even before Temby[=o] Sh[=o]h[=o], however, the legend of the
Weaving-Maiden seems to have been well known in Japan; for it is
recorded that on the seventh night of the seventh year of Y[=o]r[=o]
(A.D. 723) the poet Yamagami no Okura composed the song:--

Amanogawa,
Ai-muki tachité,
Waga koïshi
Kimi kimasu nari--
Himo-toki makina![5]