Long ago, there was a man. When he went to the province of Ise as a hunting envoy (a messenger who hunted with hawks and presented the game to the court), the mother of the woman who was then the priestess of the Ise Shrine sent word: "Treat this man with more care than the usual envoys." Since it was her mother's word, the priestess entertained him with great care. In the morning she saw him off well prepared for the hunt, and when he came back in the evening she had him come to her own quarters. So she looked after him with all her heart.
On the second night, the man said, "I must see you." Nor had she resolved never to see him. But there were too many eyes, and they could not meet. As he had come as the chief envoy, he was not lodged far away. Since he was near her sleeping quarters, she waited until everyone was asleep and came to him at about midnight.
He too could not sleep and lay looking outside. In the hazy moonlight someone was standing there, with a little girl in front of her. He was overjoyed and took her into his room, and she stayed from about one until three in the morning, but before they had said anything at all, she went back. He was very sad and stayed awake until dawn.
The next morning, as he waited anxiously, a poem came from her with no other words:
"Did you come, or did I go? I cannot tell. Was it a dream, or was it real? Was I asleep, or was I awake?"
The man wept bitterly and replied:
"I too have lost my way in the darkness of a heart gone black with grief. Whether it was dream or real, let us decide tonight when we meet again."
But that night the governor of Ise held a banquet, and they could not meet. At dawn he had to leave for the province of Owari. On the saucer of a wine cup she passed to him was written the first half of a poem: "Ours was a shallow bond, like an inlet so shallow that one wades across without getting wet." With charcoal from a burnt-out torch the man wrote the second half: "I will cross the Osaka Barrier again and surely meet you," and set off for Owari.
A single night's meeting with the priestess, who served the gods and was forbidden to love. Some say the title The Tales of Ise comes from this episode.