Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/142

Rh and I, forgetting his evil ways, took a cup of water to him. Suddenly he seized me by the arm and tried to embrace me, but I cried out ‘Lo! mother, behold what this youth has done.’ Hearing my cry, my mother rushed to the place where we were standing, and I told her (a lie) that he was choked while drinking water. Then, as my mother stroked his back, that son of a thief darted a look at me, as if he would stab me, and made me laugh.”

There is more of romance in the love scenes in the hill and sylvan tracts. “While I and my mistress were bathing one day in a stream which was swollen with freshes, she slipped into the middle of the stream and unable to stem the current, she was being carried down the river, when a gallant youth who, saw the danger, leaped into the flood, decked as he was with garlands, and bore her safely to the bank. Others who stood by, observed that they had seen her swelling bosom rest on his broad shoulders, and hearing these words my mistress vowed that she would be ever faithful to that youth. He was the son of a chief of a powerful clan of the hill-tribes. “Never,” said I, “will a Kurava girl be false to her lover, and never will the arrow shot by a Kurava be false to its mark. If ye, mountaineers are false, the valli creeper would not yield its edible root, the honey bees would not form their hives, and your hill farm yield no harvest.” Her mother who heard my words, told them to her fathers, who had thought of seeing her wed another youth of their choice. Their wrath was kindled and with eyes aflame they chose their arrows and their bows, and a whole day they thought of deeds of vengeance. But when they found that there was no fault in either party they cooled down and consented to their daughter wedding her lover. Then with joined hands we danced the Kuravai........................ Later on the elders of the clan gathered in our hamlet, led by the Arivan, to celebrate the wedding.”

The above is an instance of a chaste and noble-minded maiden, and what follows is an illustration of a wanton and forward girl of the period.