公主詩句 The Princess's Verse
當時配合之後，欲將那虎宰了，邀請諸親，卻是公主娘娘教且莫殺。其不殺之故，有幾句言詞，道得甚好，說道：当时配合之后，欲将那虎宰了，邀请诸亲，却是公主娘娘教且莫杀。其不杀之故，有几句言词，道得甚好，说道：
逐句解 Line by line
After we were wed, I wished to slaughter that tiger and call all our kin to the feast; but it was Her Highness the princess who bade me spare it. For the reason she gave against the killing, she had some lines of verse — and very well she spoke them — saying:
The prose lead-in to the couplet. 欲將那虎 takes the coverb 將 as jiāng and 那 as deictic nà; 道得甚好 takes the structural 得 as de and the adverbial 甚好 ("very well") as shèn. 教 ("bade") is jiào.
By the warrant of Heaven, by the warrant of Earth, we were made husband and wife; with neither matchmaker nor witness, our marriage was joined.
托天托地 ("entrusting to Heaven and to Earth") makes the cosmos itself the guarantor of the union; 無媒無證, "without go-between or witness," concedes the marriage’s want of proper form while claiming a higher sanction.
In a former life the red cord once bound our feet; and now the old tiger is made our matchmaker."
赤繩繫足 alludes to the tale of the Old Man under the Moon (月下老人), who binds the feet of destined couples with a red cord — the classic image of predestined marriage. 今將老虎 takes the coverb 將 as jiāng. The couplet wittily casts the tiger, agent of her abduction, as the go-between of fate.
The princess’s couplet is quoted within the demon’s fiction, and there it does double work. Within the tale, it supplies a charming, fated reason to spare the tiger; but the reader, who knows the tiger is a fabrication, sees the demon deploy a genuine-sounding scrap of verse as one more prop of his lie — verse as forgery.
The allusion to the 月下老人 and the red cord of destiny is the standard poetic figure for a marriage written in fate. Its irony here is layered: an abduction is dressed as predestined love, and the very beast that (in the story) carried her off is named the matchmaker of Heaven.