| rèng-mē-rèng-dòk-lo. |
| lived a happy and pleasant life. |
NOTES.
Here we have a narrative of a more complex character than that of the first story, with a richer vocabulary, and abounding in the descriptive adverbial particles which are the main feature of the language.
Jàngrē, orphan: sō is a diminutive particle. Jàngrē indicates that one parent is dead; jàngrèng is used when neither survives.
Inut, a loan-word from the Khasi ngut, used for the enumeration of persons: in Mikir initial ng is inadmissible.
Hèm-ēpī, widow, literally, “sole mistress of the house” (hèm); the syllable ē is perhaps a thinning down of ā; pī is the feminine affix, here of dignity.
Āchèklè, brother, used only by a woman speaking of her brothers; īk is used by both sexes; mār, collective particle, used to form plurals: often ātum is added; kòrtē, brother; both kòr and tē separately may be used for either brother or sister; bàng, the class-word used for human beings before numerals.
Do, a verb meaning to stay, dwell, exist; specially, it has the meaning “to live with as a wife,” and is the correlative of èn, “to take (to wife).”
Ārnī-kàngsàm, “day-becoming-cool-time,” the late afternoon. As is natural where there are no clocks, the divisions of the day are marked by other means than the count of hours. Ārnī is a day (or sun), regarded without reference to the lapse of time = French jour; ānērlo is a day’s space = journée. Similarly, ājō is a night, jīrlo a night’s space. The first indication of coming day is vo-khu ē-thē, “first cock-crow”; then follows vo-khu thē-nī, “second cock-crow,” and vo-khu thē-thòm, “third cock-crow”; then thē-àng prinprē-lē, “just before dawn”; then ādàp kàng-thàng, dawn (ādàp, general word for morning); then nērlo-chitīm, “day-middle,” noon; then ārnī thē-lēlo, “the sun at its height”; then ārnī-kàngsàm, “the sun becoming cool,” afternoon; then ingting lim-rim, or ingting-rim, dusk. Then begins ājō, night, when the evening meal is taken, after which soon comes the first sleep, àn-chō mèk-bur, “rice-having-eaten eye-close”; then jīrlo chitīm, midnight.