A Whit Monday at Paikara was given up to an exhibition of sports and games, whereof the most exciting and interesting was a burlesque representation of a Toda funeral by boys and girls. A Toda, who was fond of his little joke, applied the term pacchai kedu (green funeral) to the corpses of the flies entrapped by a viscous catch'em-alive-oh on the bungalow table. To the mock funeral rites arrived a party of youths, as from a distant mand, and crying out U, hah, in shrill mimicry of their elders. The lad who was to play the leading part of sacrificial buffalo, stripping off his putkuli, disappeared from sight over the brow of a low hillock. Above this eminence his bent and uplifted upper extremities shortly appeared as representatives of the buffalo horns. At sight thereof, there was a wild rush of small boys to catch him, and a mimic struggle took place, while the buffalo was dragged, amid good-tempered scuffling, kicks, and shouting, to the spot where the corpse should have been. This spot was, in the absence of a pseudo-dead body or stage dummy, indicated by a group of little girls, who had sat chatting together till the boy-beast arrived, when they touched foreheads, and went, with due solemnity, through the orthodox observance of mourning in couples. The buffalo was slain by a smart tap on the back of the head with a cloth, which did duty for an axe. As soon as the convulsive movements and twitchings of the death struggle were over, the buffalo, without waiting for an encore, retired behind the hillock once more, in order that the rough and tumble fight, which was evidently the chief charm of the game, might be repeated. The buffalo boy later on came in second in a flat race, and he was last seen protecting us from a mischievous-looking member of his herd, which was grazing on the main-road. Toda buffaloes, it may be noted, are not at all popular with members of the Ootacamund Hunt, as both horses and riders from time to time receive injuries from their horns, when they come in collision. While the funeral game was in progress, the men showed off their prowess at a game (eln), [52] corresponding to the English tip-cat, which is epidemic at a certain season in the London bye-streets. It is played with a bat like a broomstick, and a cylindrical piece of wood pointed at both ends. The latter is propped up against a stone, and struck with the bat. As it flies off the stone, it is hit to a distance with the bat, and caught (or missed) by the out fields.