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154
HONDA THE SAMUEAI.
performing tricks and he receiving a fee. The second
and third days were devoted to the entertainment of
the daimio's horses, a performance being given before
each stall, to the equal delight of grooms and
horses.
As nearly all heathen gods are only men who have
been deified after death, so each class, trade, guild,
and locality has its special patron deity. The hostler
of Japan worshiped a great tamer of horses who
lived long ago. This Rarey of history was Tsunelye",
who served the Genji and lived in Yoritomo's time
(A.D. 1136-99). He was made lord of the stables
of Kamakura. He could tame horses that no other
man durst approach. He could infuse into stupid
animals a fiery disposition. It is said that he fed
them with a white substance at midnight. No one
could discover the secret of this drug ; and as he
was drowned in the sea, he died without divulging it.
This stable in Fukui, kept at the public expense,
was, as we have said, only a shadowy relic of the old
days when every knight or gentleman was expected
to keep and maintain a horse in order to take the
field for war, whenever his lord called him out on a
campaign, in return for the land allotted him. That
is what feudalism means. The land is all divided up
into thousands of tracts, which are held in exchange
for military service. Instead of a national army of
volunteers for a single war or a standing army of
regulars who are paid wages out of the public treas-
ury, the samurai, or gentry, formed the military class
and were given land, or the revenue from land.