[Poem on the maiden of Mama in Katsushika]
In the east there is a tale handed down from long ago. A girl named Tekona of Mama in Katsushika wore a hemp robe with a blue collar sewn on, and wove only hemp skirts to wear. She did not comb her hair, and she walked without shoes. Even so, not even a princess raised with care, wrapped in brocade and figured silk, could match her. When she stood smiling like a flower, her face full as the full moon, men gathered and courted her one after another, like summer insects flying into a flame, like boats rowing into a harbor.
But though a human life is not long at all, why did she think as she did? The girl, understanding her own fate, lay down in the graveyard by the harbor where the waves roar. It was long, long ago, yet it seems to me as if I had seen it only yesterday.
[Envoy]
When I see the well of Mama in Katsushika, I think of Tekona, who came here so often to draw water that she wore the ground smooth.
It is said that Tekona, courted by many men, agonized that choosing any one would bring pain to the others, and threw herself into the inlet. Takahashi no Mushimaro is known as a "poet of legends" who turned tales from many places into verse, and here too he tells, like a story, of the beauty of a girl shining through her plain clothes and of her sad end.
Yamabe no Akahito also visited this place and wrote of Tekona's grave; the legend of Mama captured the hearts of the poets of the capital. Near the Tekona Reishindo shrine in Ichikawa there is still a well said to be the well of Mama.