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To this day, Kintaro is the hero of Japanese boys, and on their huge kites will usually be seen a picture of the little black-eyed ruddy boy of the mountains, with his axe, while around him are his wild playmates, and the young tengus rubbing their long noses, which were so nearly broken by their fall. There he lived until he grew up to manhood. At that time Echigo was infested with robbers.
They walk, when grown up, on clogs a foot high, which are like stilts, as they have but one support instead of two, like the sort which men wear. The tengus strut about easily on these, without stumbling. The Dai Tengu, or master, is a solemn-faced, scowling individual with a very proud expression, and a nose about eight finger-breadths long.
Sometimes the little tengus get fighting, and then the feathers fly as they tear each other with their little claws which have talons on them shaped like a chicken's, but which when fully grown look like hands. All the big tengus are fond of trying the strength of their noses, and how far they can bend them up and down without breaking.
It hurts very much, but he does not mind it. The tengus have one great fault. They love liquor too much. They often get drunk. They buy great casks of rice-wine, sling them round their necks, and drink out of long cups shaped like their faces, using the nose for a handle.
Some of the amusements in Tengu-land are very curious. A pair of young tengus will fence with their noses as if they were foils. Their faces are well protected by masks, for if one tengu should "poke his nose" into the other's eye he might put it out, and a blind tengu could not walk about, because he would be knocking his nose against everything.
A drunken tengu makes a funny sight, as he staggers about with his big wings drooping and flapping around him, and the feathers trailing in the mud, and his long nose limp, pendulous and groggy. When the master of the tengus wishes to "see the flowers," which means to go on a picnic, he punishes his drunken servant by swinging the box of eatables over the fellow's red nose.
Among his retainers were the tengus, though they were often rebellious and disobedient, not liking to be governed by a boy. One day, an old mother-tengu, who had always laughed at the idea of obeying a little dumpling of a fellow like Kintarō, flew up to her nest in a high fir tree. Kintarō watched to see where it was, and waited till she left it to go and seek for food.
Dancers often put on masks like the tengu's face and dance a curious dance which they call the Tengu's quadrille. The tengus are very proud fellows, and think themselves above human beings. They are afraid of brave men, however, and never dare to hurt them. They scare children, especially bad boys. They watch a boy telling lies and catch him.
"He will be dead in thirty hours," answered the abbot, with a sigh. "I'll go and procure the medicine, and if our master is still living when I come back, he will get well." Now Rikimatsu had learned magic and sorcery from the Tengus, or long-nosed elves of the mountains, and could fly high in the air with incredible swiftness.
Every night the boy would spread the roll of wisdom before him, and sit at the feet of the hoary-headed tengu, and learn the strange letters in which tengu wisdom is written, while the long-nosed servant tengus, propped up on their stilt-clogs, looked on.
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