PILLI CHARMS. 



into the Verandah," said we, " sometime before you awoke, and 

 have left the flesh on your brother's person without either of you 

 being aware of it at the time; and could not the hen then have 

 returned to the Verandah a second time, the time that you say you 

 saw her coming in." " Nonsense, that was not possible," said he, 

 " for the moment the piece of flesh fell on my brother's person, he 

 called out, as I said before; and it was the fall of the lump of flesh 

 that roused him. Sir, I am sorry you should thus cavil at things 

 which our forefathers believed, and which we old folks have our- 

 selves found to be as true now, as they were in the days of the 

 Irshis." The old man seemed very excited, and the more untena- 

 ble any of his arguments appeared even to himself, the more dog- 

 matic and wrathful he got. When any of his statements or argu- 

 ments appeared to admit of explanation on ordinary reasonable 

 grounds, he was sure to oppose it by advancing a fact or two, for 

 which, Ave are quite sure, he was more beholden to his imagination 

 and invention than to his memory. This old man is a respectable 

 man in his own way, has had all the advantages of education ac- 

 cording to the native system, and is a type of a large class of the 

 Singhalese. What those say or think, who are still less enlighten- 

 ed, and who have not had the same ii advantages of education," the 

 reader may easily imagine. 



During a previous part of our conversation on the same subject, 

 he told us another anecdote of the same kind, which he had heard 

 from a " trustworthy " person. " Some 25 or 30 years ago," said 

 he, " there was a man named Abileenu, a boutique-keeper in the 

 town of Kandy. Among other things exposed for sale in his 

 boutique, there were some green Aanamalu plantains.* Another 

 man named Bayi Appoo came to this boutique one day, and wish- 



* Aanamalu is a kind of plantain very common in Ceylon ; the fruit is lon- 

 ger than in any other species, and is used by the Singhalese in curries. All 

 other kinds of plantain, when quite ripe, acquire a reddish colour, especially in 

 their outer coverings, but Aanamalu alone always retains, even when ripe, the 

 same green colour, that it had before it had become ripe, 



