Long ago, there was a man. For years he had courted a woman he could never hope to have, and at last he stole her away and fled with her on a very dark night.
As he led her along the bank of a river called the Akuta, she saw dew on the grass and asked him, "What is that?"
They still had far to go, and the night was late. Not knowing it was a place where demons lived, and with thunder crashing and rain pouring down, he pushed her deep inside a ruined storehouse and stood at the entrance with his bow, a quiver on his back. As he sat wishing for dawn to come quickly, a demon swallowed her in one gulp. She cried, "Ah!", but in the din of the thunder he could not hear.
At last, as the day began to break, he looked, and the woman he had brought was gone. He stamped his feet and wept, but there was nothing to be done.
"When she asked, 'What are those shining white jewels?', I should have answered, 'Dew,' and vanished like the dew myself."
This happened when the Nijo Empress was living as if in service to her cousin, a consort of the emperor. She was so beautiful that the man stole her and carried her off on his back. But her brothers, the Horikawa Minister (Fujiwara no Mototsune) and the eldest, the Major Counselor Kunitsune, still of low rank then, were on their way to the palace when they heard someone weeping bitterly, stopped him and took her back. That is what is called "a demon" here. They say it happened when the empress was still very young and of ordinary rank.