The words after long ago in the village of Shiga were quoted from a story about a mysterious fire called the abura-nusumi no hi (the oil-stealing fire), which featured in the Edo period books, the and the . In those books, it's stated that there was a folk belief where an oil merchant from Ōtsu, Ōmi Province steals oil from a Jizō statue at the crossroads so that he can sell them, and became lost and turned into a mysterious fire after death. In Mount Hiei, it's said that a mysterious fire called the abura-bō appears, and in the Shokoku Rijin Dan, this fire is seen to be the same as the abura-nusumi no hi. It's inferred that Sekien's abura-akago was a made-up tale based on this abura-nusumi no hi in the Shokoku Rijin Dan and other books.