STORIES.
Story telling is the intellectual effort of people who have little
used or have not acquired the art of writing. A story is told for
amusement by mothers to their children, or by one adult to another,
while guarding their fields at night in their watch hut or before
lying down to sleep after their night meal. At each pause during the
narration, the listener has to say "hum" as an encouragement to the
narrator that he is listening; and every tale begins with the phrase
"eka mathaka rata" (in a country that one recalls to mind) and ends
with the statement that the heroes of the Story settled down in their
country and the narrator returned home.
Stories are roughly classified as (1) myths, (2) legends and (3)
folk tales.
(1) "The myth," says Gomme, "is the recognisable explanation of some
natural phenomenon, some forgotten or unknown object of human origin,
or some event of lasting influence."
The crow and the king crow were uncle and nephew in the olden time;
they once laid a wager as to who could fly the highest, each carrying a
weight with him, and the winner was to have the privilege of knocking
the loser on the head; the crow selected some cotton as the lightest
material, while his nephew carried a bag of salt as the clouds looked
rainy. On their way up, rain fell and made the crow's weight heavier
and impeded his flight while it diminished the king crow's burden
who won the victory and still knocks the crow on his head.
The water fowl once went to his uncle's and got a load of arekanuts to
sell; he engaged some geese to carry them to the waterside and hired
a wood pecker's boat to ferry them over; the boat capsized and sank
and the cargo was lost, the geese deformed their necks by carrying
the heavy bags, the wood pecker is in search of wood to make another
boat and the waterfowl still complains of the arekanuts he had lost.
(2) A legend is a narrative of things which are believed to have
happened about a historical personage, locality or event.
A cycle of legend has clustered round king Dutugemunu who rolled
back the Tamil invasion of Ceylon in the 4th Century B. C., and
he is to the Singhalese peasantry what king Arthur has been to the
Celts. The old chronicles, based on the folklore of an earlier period,
place his traditional exploits in Magam Pattu, Uva and Kotmale. His
mother was Vihâre Devi; she was set afloat in a golden casket by her
father Kelani Tissa to appease the gods of the sea, who, incensed by a
sacrilege act of his, were submerging his principality of Kelaniya;
the princess drifted to the country of Hambantota and its ruler
Kavantissa rescued her and made her his queen. The coast on which she
landed is still remembered as Durâva and has the ruins of a vihare
built to commemorate her miraculous escape.
Dutugemunu was her eldest son and when she was pregnant she longed to
give as alms to the Buddhist priesthood a honey comb as large as an ox,
to bathe in the water which had washed the sword with which a Tamil
warrior had been killed, and to wear unfaded waterlilies brought from
the marshes of Anuradapura. The town of Negombo supplied the first
and the warrior Velusumana procured the other two. Astrologers were
consulted as to the meaning of these longings and they predicted,
to quote the words of the old chronicler "the queen's son destroying
the Damilas, and reducing the country under one sovereignty, will
make the religion of the land shine forth again."
When Dutugemunu was a lad, he was banished from his father's court for
disobedience and he passed his youth among the peasantry of Kotmale
till his father's death made him the ruler of Ruhuna.
Dutugemunu had a band of ten favourite warriors, all of whom have
independent legends attached to their names; along with them, riding
on his favourite elephant Sedol, he performed wonders in 28 pitched
battles.
He died at an advanced age, disappointed in his only son Sali,
who gave up the throne for a low caste beauty. The peasantry still
awaits the re-birth of Dutugemunu as the chief disciple of the future
Maitri Buddha.
(3) A folk tale is a story told mainly for amusement, deals with ideas
and episodes of primitive life and includes elfin tales, beast tales,
noodle tales, cumulative tales and apologues.
Elfin tales deal with the magical powers and the cannibalistic nature
of the Râkshas.
A Gamarala's wife, while expecting a baby, weaves a mat bag to collect
the kekira melons when the season is on. The Gamarâla goes out every
day, enjoys the kekira himself without informing his wife that the
melons are ripe. The wife discovers that the kekira is ripe from a
seed on the Gamarala's beard. Both go out to collect the kekira melons
and fill the mat bag, when the wife gives birth to a girl. They decide
to carry the bag of kekira home and throw the child into the woods as
it is a girl. A male and female crane see this and carry the child to
a cave. The cranes get a parrot, a dog and a cat to be companions of
the girl who all grow up together and the girl is called 'sister' by
the pets. The cranes leave the girl to dive for some pearls to adorn
her and before departing advise her not to leave the cave as there is
a cannibalistic Rakshi in the woods; they also ask her to manure the
plantain tree with ash, to water the murunga tree and to feed her pets
especially the cat. The cat gets a less allowance of food than usual
and in anger puts out the fire by urinating on it. The girl goes out
to fetch fire and comes to the Rakshi's cave and meets her daughter,
who tries to keep the girl till her mother comes by promising to give
her fire, if she would bring water from the well, break firewood and
pound two pots of amu seed. The girl does all this work before the
Rakshi arrives and the daughter gives her live coals in a cocoanut
shell with a hole in it, so that the ashes dropped all along her
way. On the Rakshi's return she is told of the girls' departure and
she follows up the ash track and reaches the cave. The Rakshi sings
out to the girl that the crane father and crane mother have come with
the pearls and to open the door. The dog and the cat warn her from the
outside and the Rakshi kills them and goes away leaving her thumb nails
fixed to the lintel and her toe nails to the threshold. The cranes
return and on the parrot's advice the girl opens the door and comes
out but gets fixed by the nails and swoons away. The cranes think she
is dead, but on removal of the nails the girl recovers. They dress up
the girl beautifully, cover her with a scab covered cloth, tell her
that she is too grown up to live with them and bid her farewell. The
girl travels through the woods, becomes tired and meets the Rakshi;
she asks the Rakshi to eat her up but the Rakshi contemptuously passes
her by saying "I do not want to eat a scab covered girl; I am going
to eat a beautiful princess." The girl arrives at a king's palace
and is employed as a help mate to the cook. She used to remove her
scab covered cloth only when she went out to bathe, and a man on a
kitul tree tapping for toddy saw her beauty and informed the king who
forced her with threats to remove her scab covering and married her.
In beast tales the actors are animals who speak and act like human
beings.
A hare and a jackal sweep a house-compound; they find two pumpkin
seeds and plant them; the jackal waters his creeper with urine and the
hare waters his from the well; the jackal's creeper dies; the hare
generously agrees to share the pumpkin with his friend; the jackal
proposes a ruse to obtain the other requisites for their meal; the
hare lays himself on the road as if dead; pingo bearers pass carrying
firewood, cocoanuts, rice, pots; as each pingo carrier passes, the
jackal cries out "keep that pingo down and take away the dead hare;
as they do so the hare scampers away and the jackal runs away with the
pingos; the jackal places the food on the fire and asks the hare to
fetch stalkless kenda leaves, the hare goes in search and the jackal
cooks and eats the whole meal leaving a few grains of rice for the
hare; the jackal places a cocoanut husk under his tail to act as a
stopper for his over-filled stomach; the hare returns without the
leaves and shares the remnants of the meal with the jackal; at the
jackal's request the hare strokes the jackal's back and removes the
cocoanut husk and is besmeared with excretion; the hare runs to a
meadow, rolls on the grass and returns quite clean; the jackal asks
him how he became so and the hare replies that the dhoby has washed
him; the jackal runs to the riverside and asks the dhoby to make him
also clean; the dhoby takes him by his hind legs and thwacks him on
the washing stone till he dies, saying "this is the jackal who ate
my fowls."
The noodle tales describe the blunders of fools and foolish husbands.
Twelve men went one day to cut fence sticks and they made twelve
bundles. One of them inquired whether there were twelve men to carry
the bundles. They agreed to count and only found eleven men. As
they thought that one man was short, they went in search of him to
the jungle. They met a fellow villager to whom they mentioned their
loss. He arranged the bundles in one line, and the men in another
and said "now you are alright; let each one take a bundle of sticks
and go home" which they did as no one was missing.
The people of Rayigam Korale threw stones at the moon one moonlight
night to frighten it off as they thought it was coming too near and
there was a danger of its burning their crops; they also cut down a
kitul tree to get its pith and to prevent its falling down, one of
them supported it on his shoulder and got killed.
The country folks of Tumpane tried to carry off a well because they
saw a bee's nest reflected in the water; the men of Maggona did the
same but ran away on seeing their shadows in the well.
The Moravak Korale boatmen mistook a bend in the river for the sea,
left their cargo there and returned home; and the Pasdum Korale folk
spread mats for elephants to walk upon.
In cumulative tales there is a repetition of the incidents till the
end when the whole story is recapitulated.
A bird laid two eggs which got enclosed between two large stones. The
bird asked a mason to split open the stones; the mason refused and the
bird, asked a wild boar to destroy the mason's paddy crop. The wild
boar refused and the bird asked a hunter to shoot the wild boar. The
hunter refused and the bird asked the elephant to kill the hunter as
the hunter will not shoot the wild boar and the wild boar will not
destroy the mason's paddy, and the mason will not split open the
stones. The bird asked a bloodsucker to creep into the elephant's
trunk, but the bloodsucker declined. The bird then asked a wild-fowl
to peck at the bloodsucker as the bloodsucker would not creep up
the elephant's trunk, as the elephant would not kill the hunter; as
the hunter would not shoot the wild boar, as the wild boar would not
destroy the paddy crop of the mason who would not split the stones
which enclosed the birds' eggs. The wild-fowl refused and the bird
asked a jackal to eat the wild-fowl. The jackal began to eat the fowl,
the fowl began to peck at the bloodsucker, the bloodsucker began
to creep up the elephants' trunk; the elephant began to attack the
hunter; the hunter began to shoot at the wild boar; the boar began
to eat the mason's paddy; the mason began to split the stones, and
the bird gained access to her two eggs.
Apologues are narratives with a purpose, they point a moral and are
serious in tone.
The moral "be upright to the upright; be kind to the kind, and
dishonest to the deceitful" is illustrated by the following tale. A
certain man having accidentally found a golden pumpkin gave it to a
friend for safe keeping. When the owner asked for it back his friend
gave him a brass one; and he went away apparently satisfied. Sometime
after the friend entrusted the owner of the pumpkin with one of his
sons, but when the father demanded the son back, he produced a large
ape. Complaint was made to the king who ordered each men to restore
what each had received from the other.