(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.