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But whatever happen, oh, pray save me, my Bugyo ! Oh, pray take pity on me!" Ah! the simple apology!... But what was her age? Not twelve? not thirteen? not fourteen? Fifteen comes after fourteen. Alas! she was fifteen, and could not be saved! Therefore O-Shichi was sentenced according to the law.
Then O-Shichi, weeping and wringing her hands, made this answer: "Indeed, that is the only crime I ever committed; and I had no extraordinary reason for it but this: "Once before, when there had been a great fire, so great a fire that nearly all Yedo was consumed, our house also was burned down.
"The song was not comic, however; it was a very pathetic ballad entitled 'Yaoya O-Shichi. Yaoya O-Shichi was a beautiful girl, who set fire to her own house in order to obtain another meeting with her lover, an acolyte in a temple where she expected that her family would be obliged to take refuge after the fire.
When, having done a foolish thing, she was brought before the mayor of the city of Yedo, that high official questioned the young criminal, asking: "Are you not O-Shichi, the daughter of the yaoya? And being so young, how came you to commit such a dreadful crime as incendiarism?"
Whether the versions of the ballads I obtained in Izumo were composed there or elsewhere I am quite unable to say; but the stories of Shuntoku-maru, Oguri-Hangwan, and Yaoya O-Shichi are certainly well known in every part of Japan.
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