Koel

“ The cave in the mountain was certainly named Co-el, the house of God; equivalent to Cœlus of the Romans. To this the people made their offerings: and this was the heaven which Atlas was supposed to support. It seems to have been no uncommon term among the Africans. There was a city in Libya named Coël, which the Romans rendered Coëlu. They would have expressed it Coelus, or Cœlus; but the name was copied in the time of the Punic wars, before the s final was admitted into their writings. ”

“ King Coel after his first successes knew that, unaided, he could not hope to withstand the Roman force that must finally be brought against him. Though urged to constant action by his wise young daughter, he preferred to do nothing; and, satisfied with the acknowledgment of his power in and about his little kingdom on the Colne, he spent his time in his palace with the musicians that he loved so well, and the big bowl of liquor that he loved, it is to be feared, quite as dearly. ”

“ The slow hot drone filled the cell.
“Master,” said Oran, “it is the will of the brethren that you break your fast. You are old, and God has your glory. Give us peace.”
“Father,” urged Keir, seeing that Colum kneeled unnoticingly, his lips still moving above his black beard, with the white hair of him falling about his head like a snowdrift slipping from a boulder. “Father, be pitiful! We hunger and thirst for your presence. We can fast no longer, yet have we no heart to break our fast if you are not with us. ”

“ The next day when he stood before the Cook-house, Mell the Hen-wife's son heard a greater rattling than before. The Cook's son struck the pot-lids with the ladles more fiercely than before and he cried out in a high voice "This is the last time that I shall ever stand amongst the pots and the pans, the lids and the ladles, for I go to fight the Red Champion for the last time, and after this I will sit beside the King's Chair and the King's daughter, Princess Bright Brow, will sit upon my knee." ”

“ And still no help came from her cousin, the admiral. But one day a galley speeding up the Colne brought this unsigned message to King Coel:
“To Coel, Camalodunum, Greeting:
“Save thyself. Constantius the sallow-faced, prefect of the Western praetorians, is even now on his way from Spain to crush thy revolt. Save thyself. I wait. Justice will come.”
“Thou seest, O daughter,” said King Coel as Helena read the craven missive, “the end cometh as I knew it would. Well, man can but die.” ”

“ So Kol took his axe, though he was ill at ease, for he knew that evil would come of it, and he mounted one of Gunnar’s horses and fared to the wood.
He soon saw Swart and his men piling up bundles of firewood, so he left his horse in a hollow, and crouched down behind some bushes, till he heard Swart bid the [48] men carry the wood to Njal’s house, as he himself had more work to do. He began to look about for a tall straight young stem with which to make himself a bow, when Kol sprang out of the bushes and dealt Swart such a stroke with his axe that he fell dead without a word. ”

“ Cole.
“We will be friends, nevertheless,” she said with [Pg 32] a captivating smile. “I will visit your church in the morning, and you will return to luncheon with me, and we will have a little game of billiards afterward.”
Mr. Cole’s delicate face grew ashy. He, John Chrysostom Cole, playing billiards on Sunday! What would his mother say—and what would the bishop say! Olivia looked a little shocked because of course Madame Koller must know better. Not so the Colonel. He laughed heartlessly at Mr. Cole, and began to think Eliza Peyton was a more amusing person than he had fancied. ”

“ As the Kools grow earlier than the time of the worship of the goddess, they feel very badly seeing the trees smile with red and yellow fruits, while they are not able to touch them. The temptation on the one hand, and the fear of becoming dunces on the other, trouble them. ”

“ In the Rās Mālā [ed. 1878, p. 78 seqq.] the Koolies are spoken of as a tribe who lived long near the Indus, but who were removed to the country of the Null (the Nal, a brackish lake some 40 m. S.W. of Ahmedabad) by the goddess Hinglāj.
Though this explanation of the general use of the term Cooly is the most probable, the matter is perplexed by other facts which it is difficult to trace to the same origin. Thus in S. India there is a Tamil and Can. word kūli in common use, signifying 'hire' or 'wages,' which Wilson indeed regards as the true origin of Cooly. ”

“ All this while, the half-witted boy lay coiled up in one corner of the cabin unseen, but himself noticing every movement that transpired, until as they all settled more quietly to a realizing sense of their relative positions, when Komel seeking him brought him to Aphiz, and told him how much she owed the poor boy for kindness rendered to her, and even that he had saved her life once, if not a second time, by his mastering the guard. ”

“ Coley is, as you say, the right man in the right place, mentally and physically: the multiplicity of languages, which would try most men, is met by his peculiar gift; the heat of the climate suits his constitution; his mild and parental temper makes his black boys cling about him as their natural protector; and his freedom from fastidiousness makes all parts of the work easy to him; for when you have to teach boys how to wash themselves, and to wear clothes for the first time, the romance of missionary work disappears as completely as a great man's heroism before his valet de chambre. ”

“ With us, he was making his first trip across. From London I learned he went to Capetown, South Africa.
The greatest character on board was old Cole. In [Pg 45] all my life I have never seen a man his equal in many respects. Medium in size with brawny arms and an over-developed muscular neck, he reminded one of a huge beast, muscles superbly developed and mind untrained. Cole was some forty years of age, and a boaster from the word "Go." At the early age of ten he ran away from his parents in Norway, and secured passage on a sail boat bound for Odessa on the Black Sea. ”

“ Colley was beloved by his comrades in arms, and looked up to, especially by the rising soldiers of the modern school, as a future leader. A high military authority speaks of him as 'the ablest soldier I have ever served with,' and attributes the disaster at Majuba to the fact that even the best troops are liable to panic.
Colley's capacity as an administrator was of a very high order. During his short government of Natal he effected improvements and initiated progressive undertakings which are still gratefully remembered by the colonists. ”

“ One pair got nothing, and seeing this the Kol pair gave them of their superfluity and the descendants of these became the Ghasias, who are menials in Kol villages and supported by the cultivators. The Larka Kols attribute their strength and fine physique to the fact that they eat beef. When they first met English soldiers in the beginning of the nineteenth century the Kols were quickly impressed by their wonderful fighting powers, and finding that the English too ate the flesh of bullocks, paid them the high compliment of assigning to them the same pair of ancestors as themselves. ”

“ At last, one day, Moulee's mother (the very Nautch woman who had gone with Coplinghee Ranee and the Sowkar's wife to find Mahadeo) said to Koila, 'Son-in-law, you are a lazy fellow; you have been here now for a long time, but you do nothing for your support; it is we who have to pay for your food, we who have to provide your clothes— go now and fetch us some money, or I will turn you out of the house and you shall never see your wife Moulee again. Koila had no money to give his mother-in-law ”

“ Cole was at last sent back to his rectory, he went under strict instructions from Pembroke to keep his misfortune to himself. But alas for poor Cole! What stung him most was that Madame Koller should have seen him in that condition—for the two hard slaps that she had given him had by no means cured his infatuation. On the contrary, her strong nerves, her fierce temper, her very recklessness of conventionality, irresistibly attracted his timid and conservative nature. ”

“ Then he knew that the King’s servant had been listening in the night and that he had heard all that had been said. “We are going to be killed,” he said to Ka-le-lea; “your [187] terrible wish has been overheard, and the two of us are going to die for it.”
But Ka-le-lea only stirred on the mat he was lying on; he didn’t even get up to go to the door. And then Ke-ino saw a company of people coming out of the King’s house. They carried axes. “Here are our deaths,” said Ke-ino. ”

“ I fancy Kôla, a name for pepper in Sanskrit, may be derived from the name of the country Kôlam, North Malabar, which is much more celebrated for its pepper than the country around Quilon. This Kôlam, though resembling Kollam, is really a separate word, and never confounded with the latter by the natives. The prince of Kôlam (North Malabar) is called Kolastri or Kolattiri [A] . Compare also Kôlagiri, the name of a hill in the Sanskrit dictionaries, called also the Kôlla giri. The only possible derivations for the Tamil and Malayalim name of Quilon that I am acquainted with are these: (1.) ”

“ Here, however, at last, we find something to justify Marco Polo in regard to the position in which he introduces the kingdom of Coilon. For, after speaking of Coulam on the Malabar coast, Barbosa goes forward to Cape Comorin, where he says the country of Malabar indeed terminates, but the “aforesaid kingdom of Coulam” still goes on and comes to an end at the city of Cail, where the King of Coulam made his continual residence. So also the “Summary of kingdoms,” etc., in Ramusio, describes the kingdom of Colam as extending on both sides of Cape Comorin. ”

“ More famous even than the "Book of Durrow" is the celebrated "Book of Kells," the most wonderful monument of the art of the Sixth Century that has come down to us. It was written also by the hand of Columbcille for Kells, his third foundation, though some of the illustrations were probably added at a later date.
The story runs that not long after the foundation of Durrow, Columba went to Kells, one of the royal seats of Diarmaid, High King of Ireland. Now Diarmaid belonged to the southern branch of the Hy-Nialls and was regarded by the northern branch with no great favour. ”

“ He was thrust into it, followed by Köller, and driven under a strong escort to the citadel. On the way he groaned: “My God, what crime have I committed?”—to which his companion vouchsafed no answer. When he got out of the coach he asked that something might be given to the driver, who was one of the royal coachmen. Köller handed the man a dollar, for which he thanked him, but said in Danish, with a vindictive look at Struensee: “I would gladly have done it for nothing.” There was hardly a menial in the King’s household who would not rejoice over the favourite’s fall. ”

“ Koolau had been driven to this refuge from the lower valley by the beach. And if he were driven from it in turn, he knew of gorges among the jumbled peaks of the inner fastnesses where he could lead his subjects and live. And now he lay with his rifle beside him, peering down through a tangled screen of foliage at the soldiers on the beach. He noted that they had large guns with them, from which the sunshine flashed as from mirrors. The knife-edged passage lay directly before him. Crawling upward along the trail that led to it he could see tiny specks of men. ”

“ Aboriginal Death-Song Feet of the flying, and fierce Tops of the sharp-headed spear, Hard by the thickets that pierce, Lo! they are nimble and near. Women are we, and the wives Strong Arrawatta hath won; Weary because of our lives, Sick of the face of the sun. Koola, our love and our light, What have they done unto you? Man of the star-reaching sight, Dipped in the fire and the dew. Black-headed snakes in the grass Struck at the fleet-footed lord— Still is his voice at the pass, Soundless his step at the ford. ”

“ He had come to Hy because of two things. Maolmòr, the King of the northern Picts, had sent him to learn of Colum what was this god-teaching he had brought out of Eiré: and for himself he had come, with his age upon him, to see what manner of man this Colum was, who had made Ioua, that was “Innis-nan-Dhruidhneach”—the Isle of the Druids—into a place of new worship.
For three hours Ardan and Colum had walked by the sea-shore. Each learned of the other. Ardan bowed his head before the wisdom. Colum knew in his heart that the Druid saw mysteries. ”

“ I am laughing to see Koila and his wife Chandra Ranee journeying toward the Madura Tinivelly country. He is going to sell his wife’s bangle, and he will only be killed, and then she in anger will burn up all the country. ”

“ Colum Cille went to the church. There was a great flood that night in the river. Colum Cille, nevertheless, went through it with his clothes on. ‘Bravely dost thou come there to-night, descendant of Niall,’ said Ciaran [967] and said Mobii. ‘God is able,’ said Colum Cille, ‘to ward off the labour from us.’ As they were coming out of the church, they saw the bothies at the east side of the water, in the vicinity of the church.
481One time there a large church was built by Mobii, and the clerics were considering what each of them would like to have the church full of. ”