Some Chinese Ghosts
()
About this ebook
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Lafcadio Hearn
Lafcadio Hearn, also called Koizumi Yakumo, was best known for his books about Japan. He wrote several collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, including Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.
Read more from Lafcadio Hearn
Chita: A Memory of Last Island Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, First Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5La Cuisine Creole Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLafcadio Hearn's Japan: Fascinating Stories and Essays by Japan's Most Famous Foreign Observer Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Manga Yokai Stories: Ghostly Tales from Japan (Seven Manga Ghost Stories) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kokoro Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kwaidan – Stories and Studies of Strange Things Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLa Cuisine Creole Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Second Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Macabre Megapack: 25 Lost Tales from the Golden Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK ®: 18 Tales of Doom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5TRICK OR TREAT Boxed Set: 200+ Eerie Tales from the Greatest Storytellers: Horror Classics, Mysterious Cases, Gothic Novels, Monster Tales & Supernatural Stories: Sweeney Todd, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Frankenstein, The Vampire, Dracula, Sleepy Hollow, From Beyond… Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Vol 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Ghost Stories from Kwaidan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKwaidan (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): Stories and Studies of Strange Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Ghostly Japan Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kwaidan: Ghost Stories and Strange Tales of Old Japan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"Gombo Zhebes." - Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs, Selected from Six Creole Dialects Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan: Terrifying Japanese Tales of Yokai, Ghosts, and Demons Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Ghostly Japan (Collected Horror Tales) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKwaidan Japanese Ghost Stories and Insect Studies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Ghostly Japan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fifth Ghost Story MEGAPACK ®: 25 Classic Haunts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMasterpieces of Mystery: Ghost Stories, Detective Stories, Mystic-Humorous Stories & Whodunit Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Some Chinese Ghosts
Related ebooks
Some Chinese Ghosts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Collected Ghost Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFor Love of the King Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3 (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): Lectures Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKwaidan - Stories and Studies of Strange Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5THE HEROES OF ASGARD - 9 of the most popular Norse & Viking legends Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Heroes of Asgard: Tales from Scandinavian Mythology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLafcadio Hearn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Endless Knot: Book Three in The Song of Albion Trilogy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For Love of the King a Burmese Masque Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKwaidan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taliesin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare A Lecture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gold Horns Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRichard Garnett - A Short Story Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFolk Lore of East Yorkshire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLegends of the North: The Guidman O' Inglismill and The Fairy Bride Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKwaidan (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): Stories and Studies of Strange Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Headlong Hall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 12, No. 341, November 15, 1828 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrince Zaleski: 'I reached the gloomy abode of my friend'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Works of Lafcadio Hearn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dream (Sci-Fi Classic) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLafcadio Hearn (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEssential Novelists - Thomas Love Peacock: criticism of common sense Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Flute of the Gods Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Silver Hand: Book Two in The Song of Albion Trilogy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poems: 'Thrusting itself in unaccustomed haunts'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything's Fine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Candy House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The King James Version of the Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Other Black Girl: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Some Chinese Ghosts
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Some Chinese Ghosts - Lafcadio Hearn
SOME CHINESE GHOSTS
BY
LAFCADIO HEARN
Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Lafcadio Hearn
PREFACE
THE SOUL OF THE GREAT BELL
THE STORY OF MING-Y
THE LEGEND OF TCHI-NIU.
THE RETURN OF YEN-TCHIN-KING
THE TRADITION OF THE TEA-PLANT
THE TALE OF THE PORCELAIN-GOD
NOTES
GLOSSARY
Lafcadio Hearn
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born in Lefkada, Greece in 1850. He was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church, but in his infancy, his family relocated to Dublin, Ireland, where Hearn attended the Roman Catholic Ushaw College. Neither of these religious faiths stuck, however, and when he was nineteen Hearn went to the United States, where he began to work in journalism. He gained employment as a reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer in 1872, and became known as an investigative yet sensational journalist.
In 1877, Hearn left Cincinnati for New Orleans, where he remained for almost a decade. His writings about the city’s unique cultural life, especially its Creole population and distinctive cuisine, were published in magazines such as Harper’s Weekly and Scribner’s Magazine. His best-known New Orleans works are Gombo Zhèbes, Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs in Six Dialects (1885), La Cuisine Créole (1885), and Chita: A Memory of Last Island, a novella first published in Harper’s Monthly in 1888. Over the decade, Hearn became a much-loved chronicler of the city; today, more books have been written about him than any former resident of New Orleans other than Louis Armstrong.
Between 1887 and 1890, Hearn worked as a correspondent in the West Indies, before settling in Japan, a country that would provide his greatest inspiration. At a time when Japan was largely unknown to Westerners, Hearn became world-famous for his writings on the country. His book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894) was hugely popular, and in 1896 he began teaching English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. Hearn penned three more books concerned with Japan and Japanese culture. Amongst the best-remembered of these are his collections of Japanese ghost stories and legends, such as Japanese Fairy Tales (1898) and Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1903). Kearn died in Tokyo, Japan in 1904, aged 54. His grave is at the Zōshigaya Cemetery in Toshima, Tokyo.
To my friend
Henry Edward Krehbiel
The Musician
Who, speaking the speech of melody unto the
children of tien-hia,—
unto the wandering tsing-jin, whose skins
have the color of gold,—
moved them to make strange sounds upon the
serpent-bellied san-hien;
persuaded them to play for me upon the
shrieking ya-hien;
prevailed on them to sing me a song of their
native land,—
the song of mohlí-hwa,
the song of the jasmine-flower
PREFACE
I think that my best apology for the insignificant size of this volume is the very character of the material composing it. In preparing the legends I sought especially for weird beauty; and I could not forget this striking observation in Sir Walter Scott’s Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad
: "The supernatural, though appealing to certain powerful emotions very widely and deeply sown amongst the human race, is, nevertheless, a spring which is peculiarly apt to lose its elasticity by being too much pressed upon."
Those desirous to familiarize themselves with Chinese literature as a whole have had the way made smooth for them by the labors of linguists like Julien, Pavie, Rémusat, De Rosny, Schlegel, Legge, Hervey-Saint-Denys, Williams, Biot, Giles, Wylie, Beal, and many other Sinologists. To such great explorers, indeed, the realm of Cathayan story belongs by right of discovery and conquest; yet the humbler traveller who follows wonderingly after them into the vast and mysterious pleasure-grounds of Chinese fancy may surely be permitted to cull a few of the marvellous flowers there growing,—a self-luminous hwa-wang, a black lily, a phosphoric rose or two,—as souvenirs of his curious voyage.
L.H.
New Orleans, March 15, 1886.
The Soul of the Great Bell
She hath spoken, and her words still resound in his ears.
Hao-Khieou-Tchouan: c. ix.
THE SOUL OF THE GREAT BELL
The water-clock marks the hour in the Ta-chung sz’,—in the Tower of the Great Bell: now the mallet is lifted to smite the lips of the metal monster,—the vast lips inscribed with Buddhist texts from the sacred Fa-hwa-King, from the chapters of the holy Ling-yen-King! Hear the great bell responding!—how mighty her voice, though tongueless!—KO-NGAI! All the little dragons on the high-tilted eaves of the green roofs shiver to the tips of their gilded tails under that deep wave of sound; all the porcelain gargoyles tremble on their carven perches; all the hundred little bells of the pagodas quiver with desire to speak. KO-NGAI!—all the green-and-gold tiles of the temple are vibrating; the wooden goldfish above them are writhing against the sky; the uplifted finger of Fo shakes high over the heads of the worshippers through the blue fog of incense! KO-NGAI!—What a thunder tone was that! All the lacquered goblins on the palace cornices wriggle their fire-colored tongues! And after each huge shock, how wondrous the multiple echo and the great golden moan and, at last, the sudden sibilant sobbing in the ears when the immense tone faints away in broken whispers of silver,—as though a woman should whisper, "Hiai!" Even so the great bell hath sounded every day for well-nigh five hundred years,—Ko-Ngai: first with stupendous clang, then with immeasurable moan of gold, then with silver murmuring of "Hiai!" And there is not a child in all the many-colored ways of the old Chinese city who does not know the story of the great bell,—who cannot tell you why the great bell says Ko-Ngai and Hiai!
Now, this is the story of the great bell in the Ta-chung sz’, as the same is related in the Pe-Hiao-Tou-Choue, written by the learned Yu-Pao-Tchen, of the City of Kwang-tchau-fu.
Nearly five hundred years ago the Celestially August, the Son of Heaven, Yong-Lo, of the Illustrious,
or Ming, dynasty, commanded the worthy official Kouan-Yu that he should have a bell made of such size that the sound thereof might be heard for one hundred li. And he further ordained that the voice of the bell should be strengthened with brass, and deepened with gold, and sweetened with silver; and that the face and the great lips of it should be graven