A round half-dozen pigs at least.
&c. &c. &c.
II
The following couplet, which is not connected with the foregoing, calls perhaps for some explanation. The words, of which a free translation is appended, are supposed to be uttered by a Kachári damsel, the village belle, to a fickle lover, who, after paying court to her for a time, deserts her and marries another. The faithless swain is a man of some little importance in the village community as a dāng dāliyā, or drum-major, one of his functions being to beat the big drum (madal) at all festivals, marriage processions, &c. He has the misfortune to lose his wife after a month or two of wedded life, and then would fain return to the “old love.”
Armed therefore with his big drum of office and apparelled in his gayest attire, he presents himself before the Kachári belle and renews his suit for her hand. Now the average Kachári maiden has a wholesome sense of her own value (in married life she is not unfrequently the “better man” of the two), and no more relishes being “jilted” than her sisters in other and more civilised parts of the world. She at once, therefore, repels his advances in the most positive and unqualified way; and not only so, but in the presence of a large bevy of scornful village maidens, all highly resentful of the faithless lover’s fickleness, she proceeds to pour contempt on his suit in the following severely sarcastic couplet (”facit indignatio versus”):—
Dáng-dáliyá, dángdáliyá.
Mozáng mozáng gán-blá-ba
Náng-kho náng-li-yá; nang-li-yá