A small Japanese tale from long ago. xxx

* * * Diddilydeedotsdreamland ***

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THE MIDNIGHT HORSE

       The gardener looked around him in horror. "He has been here again !" he cried.
His wife ran out. the flowers were trampled , the fruit trees torn. They looked at the havoc almost pitifully, for this was Japan, and the land of loving gardeners and artists.

     As they stood there gazing at the destruction of the broken flowers a peasant man came walking by.
       " Oh, yes," he said. "My place has been trample as well, and some wild beast has trampled through  the rice-fields. It has happened for three nights running now. We must do something soon or we shall be ruined."
"What is that ?"  cried the gardeners wife, catching sight of a little blue Kimona among the bushes. There lay her son on the ground fast asleep. They woke him with a scolding for spending the night lying in the earth.
  " Oh but father ! " he cried. I watched for the beast, and I saw him ! He is a big black horse. He came stamping in, nibbling a bit here and a bit there, but by then I was so sleepy that I fell asleep and didn’t see which way he went."
  His father patted his shoulder, "you are a good boy but we still are left with the mystery of who this horse belongs to. There is no one here owns a black horse."
 " We will catch him tonight, " said the peasant in a determined voice.
And so as soon as it was dusk the villages hid  themselves in little groups around the village.  About midnight a cloud drifted over the moon, and presently  a great black horse came trotting noiselessly along on the grass. 

     The people ran out with their ropes and sticks and lanterns. The horse wheeled this way and that, there were men on every side  But then the horse set off like the wind, rushed past its assailants and vanished into the temple.
Everybody chased after it, but when they reached the temple there was no horse to be seen anywhere.
Then  the silence was burst by a scream from the gardeners young son. " Look ! Look ! There he is !"
The child held his lantern up to the newly painted picture on the wall. A Black Horse – and it was steaming from his running !
 All the peasants stood there mouth’s wide open gaping at the picture.
"Come we must go and fetch Mr Kanaoka; it is his horse he painted it. "
Poor Mr Kanaoka, he was almost dragged from his bed, but he hurried back to the temple with his brushes and colours. When he gazed at the wonderful horse, it looked so spirited that he could not bear to paint it out.
  At length he came upon the idea of painting in a tethering post and halter for the runaway steed, and after that there was no more harm done. But the gardener’s son often thought he caught a vicious look in the horse’s eye, as though its hoofs itched to take vengeance on its betrayer.

*I have know real knowledge of this story from a 1930’s encyclopedia for children, but there was a famous painter, whose name was Mr Kose Kanaoka, I wonder if this wee bit of mythology could have come from the 9th century A.D. Gosh Diddily may have made a connection here in Dreamland.