As it turns out, をる (oru) is a very old verb that 居る (to exist) later replaced. We usually read 居る as iru, but it can also be oru! Some things to know about this:
• The Yomi of 居る
When it comes to pronouncing 居る, people use oru as a polite substitute for iru. When they do so in written Japanese, they rarely write the kanji; the kana make the yomi perfectly clear. Also, these verbs have different conjugations: imasu versus orimasu. And speaking of the -masu form, since people normally use oru when they’re being polite, they tend to use it in the -masu form for extra politeness. Here are some sentences featuring orimasu:
両親に感謝しております。
Ryōshin ni kansha shite orimasu.
I’m grateful to my parents.
４時に全てのレクチャーを終了する予定で
おります。
Yoji ni subete no rekuchā o shūryō suru yotei de orimasu.
All the lectures are supposed to end at 4 o’clock.
• Orthographic and Phonetic Changes
Since 居る is such a useful, modern verb, you might wonder how the old word をる (or a version of it) found its way into Ishida’s haiku. Haikuists tend to use antiquated spelling, possibly in the spirit of keeping tradition alive, just as they’re doing through their art. So even though the haikuist Ishida lived in the 20th century, he appears to have used 11th-century spellings in this haiku.
As you may know, を (the object o) was once pronounced wo (which is still how you input it when typing). And を was not an isolated case; otoko (man) was written をとこ, and okashi (funny) was written をかし (the final い hadn’t yet appeared on -い adjectives), and those words were pronounced with an initial w!
By the 11th century or so, the wo and o sounds had merged in spoken Japanese, but the old spellings remained intact.
Finally, in the 20th century (especially with the postwar reforms), kana spelling was modernized to reflect the actual sounds of the language. This produced spellings such as おる, おとこ, and おかしい.
That’s all very well and good. But what about the conjugation of 撰りをれば? As we know, this was the old way of writing 撰り居れば. At that time, the pre-masu form + をる was roughly equivalent to the modern -ている construction. So that gives us these approximate equivalents:
撰りをる ≈ 撰り居る ≈ 撰んでいる
撰りをれば ≈ 撰り居れば ≈ 撰んでいれば
So 撰りをれば means something like “while choosing.”
Whew! A million thanks to Matt Treyvaud for his informative, clear thinking about this issue.
