When Generous Gods Offer “Backhoe-Arm Load of Gems”*: Folk Ideas Found among Gem Miners of the Sabaragamuwa Region

Abstract

Global research into folkloric speech acts, like folktales, folksongs and folk drama, have revealed a rich body of concealed cultural conventions and concepts, prompting the folklorist Alan Dundes to identify such events as 'autobiographical ethnography,' or the way in which a group of people would portray themselves. The present study focuses on potential cultural conjecture that could be located in a body of regional folktales found among a group of people engaged in a specific vocation, gem mining. These folktales are published as Sabaragamuwe Menik Kathandara saha Sinharaje Withthi (Gem-related Tales from Sabaragamuwa and the Happenings of the Sinharaja Forest) by their collector Tharindu Sudharshana Abeysinghe. This study intends to locate the folkloric postulate of 'folk ideas' embedded in the tales with the objective of * This is a direct translation of the quote "dena deviyo denekota backhoe atha purola denava kivvalu" found in Tale No. 14 of Sabaragamuwe Menik Kathandara saha Sinharaje Withthi by Tharindu S. Abeysinghe (2018).