Henry Parker — Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, Part 1

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Henry Parker — Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, Part 1 Tonight KacheliTV opens a new shelf: the folk tales of Ceylon, the island we now call Sri Lanka. In the first years of the twentieth century Henry Parker, an English irrigation engineer working in Ceylon, spent his evenings listening to the storytellers of its villages, and in 1910 he published their tales in London as Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon. The words you will hear are Parker's own published English translation of 1910, read word for word — this shelf's source is that 1910 translation itself, not a new translation made for this programme. We begin where his book begins: with the making of the Great Earth, the Sun and the Moon quarrelling over the first rice, a man ruined by the ill-will of a god and restored, two Yakas outwitted at their own game, a soothsayer who talked his way out of every corner, a horse that learned to speak, and a little quail who would not give up her egg. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters: 0:35 Introduction 2:15 The Making of the Great Earth 6:34 The Sun, the Moon, and Great Paddy 10:08 The Story of Senasura 15:00 Concerning a Man and Two Yakas 18:03 Kurulu-gama Appu, the Soothsayer 29:17 The Speaking Horse 32:25 The Female Quail A note on this shelf's source: Henry Parker was born in 1849 and his collection was published in 1910, but no record of his death year has been found in any authority file. This shelf was opened on the owner's ruling of 5 November 2026, accepting the evidence of the birth year, the 1910 publication, and the absence of any later trace of the author, in place of a documented death year; the death year itself is not documented and is not claimed here. Seven of the book's seventy-five tales are told in this part, chosen under KacheliTV's standing rule that tales built on killing or cruelty are left out rather than softened; no claim is made that this selection is the complete book. There are many more tales waiting in Parker's pages, and we will return to the island in Part 2. Music: theme and background music — "Gangster Piano Symphony". Source: Henry Parker, Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, Vol. 1 (London: Luzac, 1910). Project Gutenberg eBook #56614.