(SHORT FOX MAIDEN STORY NONSPECIFIC)
In one fox story a husband discovered his wife was a fox by seeing
her brush (tail) hanging from beneath the quilt when she was in
bed. She had no evil intent thought, and indeed helped her husband
with his rice field by arranging forthehitherto unsown field to be
magically planted with plants upside down. Because of this he was
excused from rice tax, although the rice ripened all the same. She
also devotedly nursed their invalid child, whose illness had
prevented her husband from tending his land. For all its
strangeness it was a good marriage. It may well be that the fox
wife was one of the messagers used by INARI, the god of rice.
(SHORT FOX STORY NONSPECIFIC)
Tadanobu, reputed to be one of Yoshitsune's retainers, belongs to
history , as a galliant solder at the battle of Yashima during the
wars between the the Taira and Minamoto clans, and to legend, part
of the legend is that he was a fox-man and another part is that
Yoshitsune had to take flight he left his mistress in care of
Tadanobu. At this time he gave the woman a drum made of fox skin
and the story goes that a fox, the child of the vixen whose skin
had been used to make the drum, took on the form of Tadanobu in
order reclaim the relic of its mother.
(FOX STORY)
In the 11th century a man and his servant were searching for a lost
horse. They thought they had gone further then they had realized
for they came upon a vast Cryptomeria, which neither of them
recognized. However, the meadow in which it grew was familiar and
so were the surrounding landmarks. The tree had simply not been
there before. The two men decided its sudden growth was the result
of some evil and they acted as did the boy who saw the second moon;
they shot arrows at it. there were no unearthly sounds on this
occasion, but the tree vanished. The man and his servant ran home
at speed. The following day they ventured out to the same place,
but all they found was an old dead fox, with Cryptomeria twigs in
its mouth. One wonders about the fate of the lost horse in this
story: It is not reveled. Nor does one know why the fox elected to
change into a tree, unless it was to hinder the search for the horse.
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