The river child. An illustrated encyclopaedia of 1712 describes it as a fact of the rivers of Kyushu: the size of a ten-year-old, with a hollow in the crown of its head that holds water and gives it strength, fond of wrestling and of melons, and dangerous to horses and cattle at the ford. What the records dwell on, and English writing rarely does, is that it makes agreements — caught or maimed, it buys itself back with a bone-setting method, a medicine formula or a written pledge, and villages kept its rite on a fixed day in return.