* * * * *

To understand the romance of this old festival, you must know the
legend of those astral divinities to whom offerings used to be made,
even by, the Imperial Household, on the seventh day of the seventh
month. The legend is Chinese. This is the Japanese popular version
of it:--

The great god of the firmament had a lovely daughter,
Tanabata-tsum['e], who passed her days in weaving garments for her
august parent. She rejoiced in her work, and thought that there was
no greater pleasure than the pleasure of weaving. But one day, as she
sat before her loom at the door of her heavenly dwelling, she saw a
handsome peasant lad pass by, leading an ox, and she fell in love with
him. Her august father, divining her secret wish, gave her the youth
for a husband. But the wedded lovers became too fond of each other,
and neglected their duty to the god of the firmament; the sound of
the shuttle was no longer heard, and the ox wandered, unheeded, over
the plains of heaven. Therefore the great god was displeased, and he
separated the pair. They were sentenced to live thereafter apart, with
the Celestial River between them; but it was permitted them to see
each other once a year, on the seventh night of the seventh moon. On
that night--providing the skies be clear--the birds of heaven make,
with their bodies and wings, a bridge over the stream; and by means
of that bridge the lovers can meet. But if there be rain, the River of
Heaven rises, and becomes so wide that the bridge cannot be formed. So
the husband and wife cannot always meet, even on the seventh night of
the seventh month; it may happen, by reason of bad weather, that they
cannot meet for three or four years at a time. But their love remains
immortally young and eternally patient; and they continue to fulfill
their respective duties each day without fault,--happy in their hope
of being able to meet on the seventh night of the next seventh month.

* * * * *

To ancient Chinese fancy, the Milky Way was a luminous river,--the
River of Heaven,--the Silver Stream. It has been stated by Western
writers that Tanabata, the Weaving-Lady, is a star in Lyra; and the
Herdsman, her beloved, a star in Aquila, on the opposite side of the
galaxy. But it were more correct to say that both are represented, to
Far-Eastern imagination, by groups of stars. An old Japanese book puts
the matter thus plainly: "Kengy[=u] (t