Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, Volume 1 (of 3)

by Unknown

Our host’s relative, having eaten some milk-rice, and taken a chew of betel and areka-nut in his mouth, is about to return to his distant village, and now leaves, saying only, “Well, I am going.” “It is good; having gone come,” is the reply. The latter word must not be omitted, or it might appear that his return in the future was not desired.

So he sets off on his journey, the host accompanying him to the garden fence. However, in a few minutes he is back again, and explains that he had met with a bad omen which made it necessary to postpone the departure. A dog stood in the path, obstructing his way, and made no attempt to move even when he spoke to it. The host cordially agrees that it would be most unwise to continue the journey after such an unfavourable omen on starting, and it is settled that he will leave early in the afternoon, when the danger, whatever it may be, probably will have passed away.

And so on, like a perpetual nightmare haunting him during his whole journey through life, the Kandian villager sees his dreaded portents in the simplest occurrences of his daily life. A few are prognostications of good luck; but far more in number are those which are to him obvious warnings, not to be disregarded with impunity, of some unknown but impending evil that he must avoid if possible.

Every evil is directly due to evil spirits, either specially instigated to injure him by inimical magicians, or taking advantage of some accidental opportunity. The evil spirits are innumerable and malevolent, and ever ready to make use of any chance to annoy or injure human beings. Thus it would be the height of foolhardiness to ignore events that appear to be signs of some approaching unfavourable action on their part.

One man informed me that in the dusk one evening he was unable to find the little exit path from his chena, and was compelled to remain all night there before the clearing work was finished. He attributed this entirely to the malicious action of an evil spirit, who had blocked it up in order to annoy him. When daylight came the path was clear, and so plainly to be seen that he was certain that he could not have missed it at night had it been in a similar state at that time.

I knew of one instance in which a man who had arranged to make a lengthy trading journey, and had loaded his cart with produce ready for an early start at daybreak, abandoned the trip because he had a dream in the night which he considered indicated an unfavourable prospect. The reader will find a similar tale included among these stories; and although the villagers laugh at the foolish men of whom it is related, there are scores of others who would return home under such circumstances.

It is a holiday season for the villagers, during which they can devote themselves to the congenial occupation of contemplating the growth of the rice and the millet crop; but it was preceded by much hard work in the rice field and the chena. The felling of the thorny jungle at the chena, the lopping and burning of the bushes, the clearing and hoeing of the ground, and the construction of the surrounding fence, were carried on continuously under a scorching sun from morning to night, until the work was completed shortly before the first light showers enabled the seed to be sown, after a further clearing of the weeds that had sprung up over the ground.

As soon as the heavier rains had softened the hard soil of the rice field, baked, where not sandy, by the tropical sun until it became like stone, the work of ploughing and preparing the land for the paddy crop was one that permitted little or no intermission. Every morning the men carried their little ploughs on their shoulders, and yoking a couple of buffaloes to each of them, spent many hours in guiding the blunt plough backwards and forwards through the soil, overgrown since the last crop by a covering of grass. It requires no slight labour to convert such an apparently intractable material into a smooth sheet of soft mud, eight inches deep. After that is done, all the little earthen ridges that form the raised borders of each of the rectangular plots into which the field is divided, and that are necessary for retaining the sheet of water which is periodically flooded over the rice, must be repaired and trimmed.

When that is accomplished the ground must be sown by hand without delay, with paddy which has already sprouted, and being merely scattered lightly on the surface of the thick mud, will grow at once. The preparation of the paddy for this purpose is one of the duties of the women, who soak it in water, and spread it a few inches thick on large mats laid on the floor of the shed or the veranda. In three days it will be sprouted, and ready for immediate sowing. After the sowing is completed, there still remains the repair or reconstruction of the stick fence which protects the field from cattle, or, in some parts, deer.

It is thought to be essential for obtaining a satisfactory crop, that each of the more important operations of these or any other works should be commenced on a day and at an hour that have been selected by the local astrologer as auspicious. There must be no unfavourable aspects of the planets, which are held to have a most powerful and often deleterious influence on all terrestrial matters; planets or no planets, certain days are also recognised by every person who claims a modicum of intelligence, as being notoriously unlucky.