Once upon a time, there lived a strong woman named Oiko in the village of Ishibashi in Omi. This year, the village faced the drought. The people turned the water away and prevented it from flowing into Oiko’s rice paddy. At night, when everyone was asleep, she took a big rock and put it in the middle of the ditch to stop the water from running. The next morning, the villagers woke up and were astonished to see that the big rock had stopped the flow of water. They tried to remove the stone but could not even move it. So, they went to Oiko’s house to apologise. “Please remove that stone,” they begged her. “We will let you have all the water you want in your field.” At night, she went and moved the stone to a place where it did not obstruct the flow of water. The stone had remained there for a long time and is called the stone from Oiko’s inlet.
Oiko and the Stone
