I have never heard any proverb, song, or folk-tale of the Muduvars, and believe the story of their arrival on the hills to be their stock tale. They have a story, which is more a statement of belief than anything else, that, when a certain bamboo below Pallivasal flowers, a son of the Maharaja of Travancore turns into a tiger or puli-manisan, and devours people. Men often turn into puli-manisan owing chiefly to witchcraft on the part of others, and stories of such happenings are often told. The nearest approach to a proverb I have heard is Tingakilamei nalla tingalam, which sounds rather tame and meaningless in English, "On Monday you can eat well"--the play on the words being quite lost. The Muduvars make a miniature tom-tom by stretching monkey skin over a firm frame of split bamboo or ita, on which the maker thereof will strum by the hour much to his own enjoyment. In former days, the whole tribe were very shy of strangers, and it is only within the last thirty years that they have become used to having dealings with outsiders. Old men still tell of the days when robbers from the Coimbatore side used to come up, burn the Muduvar villages, and carry off what cattle or fowls they could find. Even now, there are some of the men in whom this fear of strangers seems to be innate, and who have never spoken to Europeans. In the women this feeling is accentuated, for, when suddenly met with, they make themselves scarce in the most surprising way, and find cover as instinctively as a quail chick. There are now and again men in the tribe who aspire to read, but I do not know how far any of them succeed. The Muduvars are becoming accustomed to quite wonderful things--the harnessing of water which generates electricity to work machinery, the mono-rail tram which now runs through their country, and, most wonderful of all, the telephone. An old man described how he would raise envy and wonder in the hearts of his tribe by relating his experience. "I am the first of my caste to speak and hear over five miles," said he, with evident delight.