wafted me into dreamland. Presently, I said, a turbaned magician will clap his hands and all will disappear these pleasant gentlemen, these palms, the fireflies — all! I shall rub my eyes, see a London fog, turn over, and doze again. Not so! But the dream is destined to pass into a fantastic realm.

My host had read my "Demonology and Devil-Lore ;" he knew my interest in the diabolic fauna of Ceylon, and determined that for once I should have enough of them. The wild people called "devil-dancers" are not found in or near Colombo; English customs have frightened them into remote places. My host with characteristic considerateness had brought twenty or more devil-dancers from the hills to perform their weird orgies before the door.

The Hindu servants of the family are accustomed during the month between December 12 and January 12 to design a mosaic of flour and flowers with small animal figures on the ground in front of the veranda. At five points of it are flowers, their stems stuck in small balls of a substance which it requires all a cow's sanctity to dignify. Petals are also strewn about over the figures, whose object is to drive away the devils; and one may remember how in Goethe's "Faust" the angels pelt the devils with flowers, which sting them like flames. But these Hindu. charms had no effect upon our devil-dancers. It was just there that the scene took place. Unforewarned of any performance, I was bewildered by a flare of torches approaching from various quarters, held by men nearly naked.

Then there was low beating of tom-toms. Presently a man began to drawl out a wild wailing chant, in which another and then another joined. There were words, but the gentlemen present, though all linguists, could not make out the patois; one of them told me the singers

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themselves probably did not know the meaning of their rune. By this time a considerable crowd of people had gathered about the outer columns of the portico, and the flaring of the torches on their shining black bodies and eager faces made a wondrous scene.

At length a robust fellow cleared a space, and we were informed that the devil-dance would be preceded by a "kolum" (extravaganza). Thereupon two appear in grotesque masks, embroidered red and green blouses, belts with jingles, white trousers reaching to midway the leg, and plumed caps. After a minute's dancing around each other they stopped and conversed. Their words were translated for me: "Can you dance?" "Yes." "How do you dance?" "As you have seen me doing all this time." "Can you turn a somersault?" "I am going to do that." The questioner grapples and hugs him roughly. "I have been stopped from a somersault by your embrace." "I am Don Helenes de Silva, soldier." "And I am Milord the soldier." Both of them then recount the terrific battles through which they have passed, conquering all their foes, and compare their multitudinous wounds. They then dance slowly around in cautious pursuit, as if for a grapple, but suddenly take to their heels.

An old man with a long white beard now approaches led by a young woman whitened by chalk. After some dancing by these two, the old man stops to cough and gasp. The young woman mimics the cough and everything else done by this aged man, whom they call "Pannikera,' which may mean "pantaloon." A young man enters and tells the bystanders that the aged man is his son. They cry out at the impossibility. The old man says that he had been three times married, and adds (to the youth), "I am here to dance by the king's order, but have re

ceived no invitation; as penalty you must dance and go." This the youth did, and the ballet ended.

During this performance the tom-toms and the unison of intoning voices were incessant. But when "kolum" had ended, and the devil-dance was about to begin, the vocal and instrumental overture was furious. There was no change in the tune, but the time was accelerated, the beats changed, the voices became louder and wilder. There was something distinctly diabolical in the notes, which, in combination with the silent throng of nearly naked people, their white eyes lighting up their dusky faces, along with the lurid torches, caused sensations to shoot through one's

nerves.

A deafening succession of tom-tom thumps accompanied the entrance before us of the Serpent King, Naga Rajah. His mask, face and crown together, represented every terrible and beautiful curve and contortion of the cobra. Serpents (realistic in the dusk) coiled out of the corners of his many-fanged mouth and about his huge protruding eyes and made the pendants of his ears, the heads and hoods of five cobras rising to make the canopy of his crown. With him came his prime minister, who also succeeded well in his mask of serpent decorations, having above his head three huge hooded cobra-heads and three smaller. With these was a third, crowned with five cobras. The three faces were blood-red, goggle-eyed, tusky, the forms dressed in red with touches of green, beneath which patches of black skin were discernible as they threw themselves about in sinuous ecstasies. The theme of their dance, though they spoke no word, was evidently the serpent; they coiled, twisted, twined, and wrung their necks so long as to make one uneasy. Possibly we were witnessing a travesty of ancient rites of serpent-worship.