瘤 (kobu) Lump

この間，ニューヨークで近所を歩いていて，瘤のあるおばあさんを見た。背中をくの字に曲げてうつむきにしょぼしょぼと向こうから歩いて来る所すれ違いにふとかいま見ると，左の頬にあんず位の瘤があった。そして突然、瘤取りじいさんの話を思い出した。その昔，頬に瘤のある無欲なおじいさんが，森深く道に迷って夜更けに鬼の宴会にとびこんでしまった。そこで，舞を舞った所大変気に入られ、翌晩また来るようにと保証に瘤をきれいに取ってしまった。同じように瘤のある隣の欲深いおじいさんがこの話を聞いて、翌晩鬼の所に行って舞を舞ったけど，気に入られず，鬼は怒ってきのうの瘤をあいている方の頬に付けてしまった。 勧善懲悪を教える この民話は、鎌倉時代13世紀の「宇治拾遺物語」から伝わったもので、日本の子供達にはなじみ深いお話です。子供の頃に聞いて良く憶えていますけど、渡米以前、たまに瘤のある老人を町で見かけたことも記憶にあります。瘤を見たのはそれ以来初めて、それもニューヨークで、60年ぶりの事とて、本当に驚きました。家に帰って調べた所に依ると、「粉瘤腫 (Atheroma)」は皮下に出来る良性腫瘍で、頬に出来るのは「耳下腺の多形成腺腫」といって放っておいて大きくなっても害はないそうです。でも半世紀前と比較して、瘤のある人は殆どいなくなったのでしょうか。イエメン、ソマリア、エジプトなどで、チャット或いはカート（和名あらびやちゃのき）の葉を刺激のために噛んで頬に貯めるそうですが、これは瘤ではありません。


courtesy - http://yemen.way-nifty.com/blog/2009/04/post-6f64.html


The other day in my neighborhood in New York I saw a woman with a large lump on the cheek. She was bent forward and trudged toward me, as we crossed, I took a quick glance and saw on her left cheek a lump the size of an apricot. Suddenly, I remembered the story of “Kobutori Jiisan (An Old Man Who Lost his lump).” Long time ago, a selfless old man with a lump on his cheek got lost deep in the woods and came upon an ogre’s banquet near dawn. To entertain the host, he danced a dance, and the ogre appreciated it and ordered him to come back the next night and took the lump off his cheek as a security. Hearing this story, an avaricious old neighbor, also with a lump, went into the woods, found the ogre’s banquet, and danced a dance but badly and the ogre, in anger, pressed the lump from the night before on the man’s free cheek. The folktale which teaches the lesson of reward and punishment originated in the 13th-century “Tales of Uji Shûi” from the Kamakura Period, and is familiar among Japanese children. I remember it well, too. I also remember having seen old men with a lump now and then before I came to the US. But I have never seen any since then, these 60 years, and seeing one, of all places in New York, was a great surprise. What I could find out is that atheroma is the benign swelling that develops under the skin, and the lump on the cheek is the tumor of the parotid gland, and it may enlarge but does no harm. Compared with a half century ago, we see today hardly any person with a lump on the cheek. In Yemen, Somalia, Egypt and other Arabian and East African areas, the evergreen leaves of Khat are chewed and collected in the cheek to extract their stimulant juice. This is not tumor.

07/26/11