小雁嗛睛 The Gosling Takes His Eye
行者見了，心中自悔道：「是我的不是了。」恨了一聲，跌足高呼道：「咦！逐年家打雁，今卻被小雁兒嗛了眼睛。」行者见了，心中自悔道：「是我的不是了。」恨了一声，跌足高呼道：「咦！逐年家打雁，今却被小雁儿嗛了眼睛。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim saw it and reproached himself within: "This is my own doing."
Six characters, and 不是 means two different things inside them: first "is not", then the noun "fault". (不 shifts to bú before the falling tone of 是.) 心中 takes 中 at zhōng. The admission is unusual — the Great Sage rarely concedes an error at the moment of making it, and never this fast.
He groaned aloud, stamped his foot and cried: "Ai!
跌足 is to stamp the foot in vexation, a gesture of self-reproach rather than of anger — the thing you do when the mistake was your own.
"Year upon year I have shot geese, and today a gosling has carried off my eye."
Here is the proverb, and it is the hunter undone by his own quarry. 嗛 is xián. 康熙 carries four bands for this character and the easy guess picks the wrong one: 苦蕈切, 音歉, which covers the cheek-pouch of 爾雅 — 寓鼠曰嗛 — and the senses shared with 謙 and 歉. The band wanted here is 唐韻 戸監切, 集韻 乎監切, 音銜, which 說文 glosses 口有所銜也, to hold something in the mouth — and the line 康熙 quotes for it comes from 史記·大宛傳: 鳥嗛肉蜚其上, birds carrying flesh in the beak. 小雁兒 takes the full ér, the gosling being alive.
是我的不是了 is a remarkable line to find in this mouth. The Great Sage concedes the fault immediately, without qualification, before any consequence has landed, and the novel gives him no rhetorical cover for it. The concession measures how complete the reversal is.
The proverb he reaches for is the sharper judgement. Year upon year I have shot geese, and today a gosling has carried off my eye. A lifetime of expertise set against a single lapse, and the lapse wins. What makes it exact is the choice of bird: not a hawk or a tiger but a gosling, the least formidable thing a fowler could possibly be beaten by — and the Great Sage picks it deliberately, against himself.
The character 嗛 carries the image precisely, and the dictionary tradition preserves why. Its relevant reading means to hold in the mouth, and the illustration the lexicographers chose was birds carrying flesh in the beak. The gosling does not peck the eye. It takes it away.