Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/361

 Rh unwittingly partook of it, but soon discovered that it was the body of her child by a finger which she found in the dish. In a frenzy she fled to the forest, and was transformed into a ulania, or devil-bird, whose appalling screams represent the agonized cries of the bereaved mother when she left her husband's house.

The hooting of owls in the neighbourhood of houses is believed to bring misfortune on the inmates. The magpie robin, though one of the finest of the song-birds of Ceylon, is similarly tabooed; it has a harsh grating screech towards evening, which is considered ominous. The quack of the pond heron flying over a house is a sign of the death of one of the inmates, or of a death in the neighbourhood. If the green pigeon (Nila kohocya) should happen to fly through a house, as it frequently does on account of its rapid and headlong flight, a calamity is impending over that house. Similarly with the crow. But sparrows are believed to bring luck, and are encouraged to build in the neighbourhood of houses, and are daily fed. The fly-catcher bird of Paradise is called "cotton-thief," because in ancient times it was a freebooter, and plundered the cloth-merchants. As a penalty for its sin it was transformed into a bird and doomed to carry a white cotton attached to its tail. The red wattle lapwing, the alarm bird of sportsmen, has the following legend connected with it:—It is said to represent a woman who committed suicide on finding herself robbed of all her money, amounting to thirty silver pieces, by her son-in-law. The cry of the bird is likened to her lament: "Give the silver, give the silver, my thirty pieces of silver." Its call is heard at all hours, and the stillness of night is broken with startling abruptness by its shrill cry. Another story about it is that when lying in its nest in a paddy field, or a dry spot in a marsh, it lies on its back with its legs in the air, being in continual fear that the heavens will fall and crush its offspring.

The story current about the blue-black swallow-tailed fly-catcher (kawudu pannikkia) and its mortal enemy, the crow, is that the former, like Prometheus of old, brought down fire from heaven for the benefit of man. The crow, jealous of the honour, dipped its wings in water and shook the drippings over the flame, quenching it. Since that time there has been deadly enmity between the