The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 11Hakluyt, Richard
History
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 11
Hakluyt, Richard
Discoveries in geography -- English; Voyages and travels
These mens prayers both good and bad are thought greatly to preuaile,
insomuch that both their blessings and their curses they sell vnto the
people. The nouices of this order, before they be admitted, goe together
two or three thousand in a company, vp a certaine high mountaine to doe
pennance there, threescore dayes voluntarily punishing themselues. In this
time the deuill sheweth himselfe vnto them in sundry shapes: and they like
young graduats, admitted as it were fellowes into some certaine companie,
are set foorth with white tassels hanging about their neckes, and blacke
Bonnets that scarcely couer any more then the crawne of their heads. Thus
attyred they range abroade in all Iapan, to set out themselues and their
cunning to sale, each one beating his bason which he carieth alwayes about
with him, to giue notice of their comming in al townes where they passe.
There is also an other sort called Genguis, that make profession to shewe
by soothsaying where stollen things are, and who were the theeues. These
dwell in the toppe of an high mountaine, blacke in the face: for the
continuall heate of the sunne, for the cold windes, and raines they doe
continually endure. They marry but in their owne tribe and line: the report
goeth that they be horned beasts. They climbe vp most high rockes and
hilles, and go ouer very great riuers by the onely arte of the deuill, who
to bring those wretches the more into errour, biddeth them to goe vp a
certaine high mountaine, where they stande miserably gazing and earnestly
looking for him as long as the deuill appointeth them. At the length at
noonetide or in the euening commeth that deuill, whom they call Amida among
them to shew himselfe vnto them: this shew breedeth in the braines and
hearts of men such a kinde of superstition, that it can by no meanes be
rooted out of them afterward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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