In Yamato Province there lived an old widow and her daughter. The old woman was constantly plagued by sickness, and was never satisfied by her daughter's efforts to please her. The daughter was possessed of a fair face and temper; as she had been raised in poverty and taught her filial duty, she did not shy from spending long hours working to support her aged mother.

More than anything in the world, the old woman loved the taste of parsley soup. One morning, in a typical outburst, she thrust aside the bowl of millet her daughter offered her. "Worthless child! I crave parsley! It was I who brought you into this world--can you not do this one thing for me?"

"I will do my best," the daughter replied. "But I may not find many sprigs of parsley."

As the girl found her basket and left the hut, the old woman muttered at her sorry state, predicting that her thankless child would forget about her mother's plight, and spend long hours amusing herself in typical selfish fashion.

As she walked up the road that led to the hill where she hoped to find parsley, the girl noticed that many other villagers were milling about. "What is happening?" she asked an old woman she knew.

"The Prince Shotoku will soon pass by here," said the old woman, who had five children of her own, but envied the piety of this unappreciated child. "He is going to his palace at Asuka, together with his retainers and his suite."

"It will be a splendid sight," chimed in another villager.

"Who is the Prince?" the girl asked, for she knew little of the world beyond her hut and the hill upon which the parsley grew.

"He is a great man."

"He is of unsurpassed wisdom."

"He is the Heir Apparent."

"He brought to us knowledge of the Lord Buddha," said a holy man, and the other voices fell silent. "It is said that Kannon came to his mother the Empress in a dream, fortelling that she would bear a great and wise son; that as a child he held in his palm the pupil of Shaka's left eye, which he has placed in Horyu Temple. The sage Nichira instructed him as a child. And I have also heard it said that the Prince knows the past and the future."

"Truly, he must be a great man," said the girl. "And I should like to have seen him, but I must gather parsley for my mother." With that, she climbed the hillside, to the surprise and annoyance of the other villagers.

They soon forgot her, for Prince Shotoku's retinue was truly impressive. In that afternoon, the villagers saw more horses, palanquins and banners than in all of the ten or fifteen years before. There were almost more servants than villagers; though he was of unsurpassed wisdom, the Prince traveled with a multitude of ministers and advisors. The women remained hidden from sight, but nonetheless the villagers were sure that they must be the most beautiful women in the world.

The Prince scarcely took notice of the villagers who prostrated themselves before him; such sights were quite unremarkable. He did notice the lone figure on the hill. Curious, he instructed his Chief Counselor to go to her, and ask what task had so absorbed her interest.

The Counselor toiled up the hill, observed by Shotoku, his companions, and those villagers who had grown bored with staring at the ground and wanted to discover what was going on. The Counselor spoke to the girl for a moment. Her bearing, the Prince noted, was polite but not fearful.

"My Lord, she is picking parsley," the Counselor said when he returned, and paused a moment to catch his breath. "Her aged mother has set her on this task, for she loves parsley soup. The girl does not wish to offend you, she says, but she was taught that filial duty must come before vassal duty."

The Prince nodded, and proceeded to Asuka.

After concluding his business in the city, he again summoned his Chief Counselor. "I wish for you to go back to the village we passed through, and speak to the girl who was so intent on picking parsley. Tell her that in two days I would visit her, and beg a bowl of parsley soup."

The Counselor set out with an escort of his own. Had the villagers not just witnessed the Prince's retinue, they would have been exceedingly impressed. As it was, the headman of the village was still apprehensive when the armed men, banners fluttering, appeared at his door. He and his family prostrated himself before the Prince's Counselor.

"My lord and master, the noble Shotoku Taishi, has charged me to speak with a girl of this village," the Counselor said. "She is the one who, when all others in the village turned their attention to the Prince's noble procession, amused herself by picking parsley. Do you know the identity of this girl?"

"Indeed I do," replied the headman. "And I beg forgiveness for her behavior. I and my fellow villagers have done our humble best to punish her. From that day on, we have spurned her company, and if we must meet her or speak of her, refer to her only as Princess Parsley."

"I would speak to this girl," said the Counselor, and was shortly taken to the humble hut shared by the girl and her mother.

"My master, the noble Prince, has asked me to inform you that, two days hence, he will again pass through this village," said the Counselor. "He would stop here and share a bowl of parsley soup."

The girl's eyes widened at this unexpected announcement. "I shall prepare for him the best parsley soup that I can," she promised. The Counselor took his leave, and did not dwell upon the strange fancies of his master.

While the girl tried to calm herself and sleep, the headman spoke to the other villagers. "The Prince is greatly displeased with this girl," he said. "We should demonstrate our loyalty to the Heir and drive her from this place."

"She is a good girl," said the old woman with five children, all of whom together were less pious than Princess Parsley. "She treats her mother well."

"We have tormented her already," said another man, "in payment for any ill feelings the Prince may hold toward this village because of her behavior."

"If he wishes to punish her in some special way, we should not stop him," put in another. "Nor should we drive her away to some place where he cannot find her."

So the girl and her mother went unmolested. The villagers still called the girl Princess Parsley, though their voices were now tinged with different emotions: pity, in some cases, and ugly anticipation in others. The girl, who had lived all her life with her mother's cruel tongue, took the villagers' scorn in stride. The morning of the Prince's visit, she gathered fresh parsley, and used her small savings to buy a new mat to set before the alcove. Having cleaned the tiny hut, and made it as presentable as possible, she sat down to await her guest's arrival.

Soon she heard a great commotion outside: the Prince's train approached her hut, surrounded by villagers prostrating themselves. The girl followed suit, and welcomed the Prince into her home.

The Prince spoke courteously, though he could not have failed to note the poor condition of the girl's home. He sat carefully upon the new mat. "May I have a bowl of parsley soup?"

"Yes, my lord," the girl replied, fetching him a bowl. She also brought a bowl for her mother, and then one for herself, and the three ate in silence.

"This is the best parsley soup I have ever tasted," the Prince said, and then began to speak of all manner of things to the girl. At first, she could not quite believe that he would speak to so poor and unworthy a person as herself; but then, she reminded herself that he was of unsurpassed wisdom, and must therefore have a good reason for everything that he did. They were soon deep in conversation, and the afternoon sped by.

At last, the Prince turned to the old woman. "You are to be congratulated on having raised a daughter who is beautiful, pious, intelligent and wise. I would ask you to give her to me as my wife."

The old woman--who had remained silent throughout the afternoon, aware of how far below the Prince's station she and her daughter lay--could not believe her ears. "But she is only a poor girl, unworthy of the least of your servants." Another thought entered the old woman's head. "Besides which, she is my only child. Who else will care for me in my old age?"

"You shall lack for nothing," the Prince said. "Not even parsley."

The old woman nodded once, and the Prince turned to the girl. "Is this agreeable to you?" he asked, and she also could only nod. "Then I shall return to the Capital, and send for you in a few days."

"Robbed of my daughter," the old woman began to mutter. "He has servants aplenty--why does he need to rob me of my only worthless child?" She was still talking like that when the headman came in. He was hopeful that his earlier cruelty would be forgotten, and thus reacted most harshly to the old woman.

"How can you say such things?" he demanded. "Your daughter--whom you have done nothing to deserve--has brought honor to this village. You will live in splendid style. How can you keep complaining?"

The mutters grew quiet, but they did not stop until after the wedding, when Shotoku brought the old woman to the mansion he had built for her in Asuka. He had ordered parsley planted all about the grounds, with ten gardeners to tend it, and cooks to keep a steady supply of parsley soup available. In the final years of her life, the old woman finally seemed, for the most part, satisfied.

As for the Prince's bride, she was overwhelmed by the palanquins and attendants sent from the Capital; but that splendor still left her unprepared for the wedding festivities. She often wondered which part of her life had been a dream: the early years of poverty spent with her mother, or her years married to the Prince. For surely, one person could not fit both experiences into the same lifetime.

Yet her early life must have happened, for people affectionately called her Princess Parsley. She was the Prince's favorite wife, the one with whom he would often talk, and the only one who ever walked into the gardens and picked herbs with which to make him soup. They had many fine children, and lived for years in happiness. When the Prince died, shortly followed by his Princess Parsley, they were buried in the same tomb.

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