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.