Prevod

This, too, is a tale of long ago. In a certain household there lived a rather simple-minded serving woman. She begged some paper from someone and asked a young monk who happened to be there, “Please write me out a calendar in kana.” The monk readily agreed and wrote one for her. At first he did it properly, marking days favorable for worshipping the gods and Buddhas, along with the usual auspicious and inauspicious days. But as he went along, he began putting down such things as “A day for eating nothing,” and then, “A day for eating well, if there is food to be had.” The woman thought it a peculiar sort of calendar, but never dreamed how far the joke went. Supposing that these must be the rules, she followed them without fail. Then one day she came upon the words “You must not relieve yourself.” She wondered at this, but thought it must be so, and held herself in all day. Farther on, however, just as ordinary calendars list one ill-omened day after another, he had written “You must not relieve yourself” over and over again. For two or three days she endured it, but at last she could bear it no longer. Clutching her bottom with both hands, she twisted this way and that, crying, “What shall I do? What shall I do?”—until, they say, she let go without knowing what she was doing.