“I shall let you have the head and the robe if you insist; but I must
tell you that this is not the head of a man. It is a goblin’s head. So,
if you buy it, and have any trouble in consequence, please to remember
that you were not deceived by me.”
“What a nice priest you are!” exclaimed the robber. “You kill men, and
jest about it!... But I am really in earnest. Here is my robe; and here
is the money;—and let me have the head... What is the use of joking?”
“Take the thing,” said Kwairyō. “I was not joking. The only joke—if
there be any joke at all—is that you are fool enough to pay good money
for a goblin’s head.” And Kwairyō, loudly laughing, went upon his way.
Thus the robber got the head and the _koromo;_ and for some time he
played goblin-priest upon the highways. But, reaching the neighborhood
of Suwa, he there leaned the true story of the head; and he then became
afraid that the spirit of the Rokuro-Kubi might give him trouble. So he
made up his mind to take back the head to the place from which it had
come, and to bury it with its body. He found his way to the lonely
cottage in the mountains of Kai; but nobody was there, and he could not
discover the body. Therefore he buried the head by itself, in the grove
behind the cottage; and he had a tombstone set up over the grave; and
he caused a Ségaki-service to be performed on behalf of the spirit of
the Rokuro-Kubi. And that tombstone—known as the Tombstone of the
Rokuro-Kubi—may be seen (at least so the Japanese story-teller
declares) even unto this day.