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| Tuesday, 9 March 2004 |
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Comparing Sinhala nursery rhymes with English by Sumana Saparamadu In the past few weeks readers' attention has been drawn to the violence and sadism inherent in English nursery rhymes. It seems opportune to have a look at our own Sinhala nursery rhymes and see how they compare with English rhymes.
Nalin Fernando, one-time ANCL staffer, writing about "The Corrupting Influence of English Nursery Rhyms (Daily News Feb. 7) says that had he not gone to a school where teachers had names like Keat he would have learned to sing songs like ' ma bala kale ' and ' olu pipila '. These are not traditional songs repeated by generations of children. They belong to more recent times when the radio became part and parcel of middle-class Sinhala-speaking homes in the mid forties I guess. The first song mentioned by Nalin was composed and sung by C. T. Fernando and popularised by the radio. The other is one of Sunil Shanta's many songs which formed the repertoire of children's songs in the late forties and fifties. What then are the rhymes jingles and ditties infants learned or were taught before the arrival of radio - the wireless as it was called then. I took my mind back to my childhood which was a long long time ago, so long that I do not wish to disclose it, not through vanity, but to avert the evil tongue which I fear - "still working and writing at that age! bla bla bla!!" To get back to the rhymes and ditties I and others of my generation were nurtured on, the perennial favourites "Ambalamay Pinah" and "Tikiri Liyah" and the swing song "Onchili Chili Chilla Malay" are some I remember singing." "Pinah comes to the wayside rest with a pingo-load of pots and they are broken to bits by a bull and I can't stop laughing." How shameful to laugh at another's misfortune! But, I have read, where I cannot recall, that it is an allegorical verse meant for grown-ups, which has somehow found its way to the nursery and sung by children for so long that its true meaning is now quite forgotten. The words are easily understood by children repeating it and each line evokes a graphic picture, making the child too laugh. The other is about the little girl who went to the well to fetch a pot of water and had her foot bitten by a "diya bariya" the harmless water snake - nothing like what happened to Jack who fell down and broke his crown. This rhyme has been changed and is being used as an advertising jingle on the radio. "Little Tikiri Liyah went on stage. She forgot her lines. It's just as well it was Tikiri Liyah". Before learning these rhymes I would have learned to repeat couplets like ' ikkai mamai galu giya - ikka hitiya mang awa '. Ikka is a hiccup and I am sure an adult or adults would have repeated this each time when got a hiccup - a charm to stop the hiccup? How many kids in primary school today would know this little verse which the famous poet Totagamuwe Sri Rahula is said to have recited impromptu when the king - whose protege he was, inquired after his health and well-being? There is another rhyme equally popular as Ananda Rajakaruna's poem about the rose and the wasp. It is about a golden coloured butterfly who sucked all the honey in every flower. There is a new stock songs for little children about birds and butterflies, rabbits and hares and ducklings and cats that have come over the air during the children's hour. Recently I heard a child of four in Omalpe, a remote village in the Ratnapura district singing a song about a "Seenibola hotalaya". This song which she had picked up from a radio "children's hour" is a composition by the reputed lyricist Sunil Ariyaratna. With a rich and happy heritage of songs and rhymes, jingles and riddles, why do pre-school teachers teach their young charges English nursery rhymes about a farmer's wife who cuts off the tails of three blind mice and a naughty boy who throws pussy into the well and stars that twinkle up above the world so high? Twinkle is a tongue-tripper in the village where no English is spoken), for prestige and nothing else. A pre-school that teaches English nursery rhymes is a cut above those that teach only kavi (poems) sindu (songs) and theravili (riddles). Parents assess a school by the amount of English taught - more mistaught - by the teachers. |
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