called Ssé,--
Accompanying their sound with song,--
Then do the grandfather and the father return;
Then do the ghosts of the ancestors come to hear._




THE STORY OF MING-Y

_Sang the Poet Tching-Kou: "Surely the Peach-Flowers blossom over
the tomb of Sië-Thao."_


Do you ask me who she was,--the beautiful Sië-Thao? For a thousand years
and more the trees have been whispering above her bed of stone. And the
syllables of her name come to the listener with the lisping of the
leaves; with the quivering of many-fingered boughs; with the fluttering
of lights and shadows; with the breath, sweet as a woman's presence, of
numberless savage flowers,--_Sië-Thao_. But, saving the whispering of
her name, what the trees say cannot be understood; and they alone
remember the years of Sië-Thao. Something about her you might,
nevertheless, learn from any of those _Kiang-kou-jin_,--those famous
Chinese story-tellers, who nightly narrate to listening crowds, in
consideration of a few _tsien_, the legends of the past. Something
concerning her you may also find in the book entitled "Kin-Kou-Ki-Koan,"
which signifies in our tongue: "The Marvellous Happenings of Ancient and
of Recent Times." And perhaps of all things therein written, the most
marvellous is this memory of Sië-Thao:--