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Updated: July 13, 2025
You see their native houses, long bamboo structures raised on piles and thatched with grass, with low eaves sloping nearly to the ground. In sylvan glades sacred to the nats you pass wooden pillars erected by the roadside, rudely cut, and rudely painted with lines and squares and rough figures of knives, and close beside them conical grass structures with coloured weathercocks.
Says I to myself, "It can't be the fault of the place, anyway. They have got a chance for their souls to soar if they want to." Thinks'es I, here is room and to spare, to pass by laws big as elephants and camels. And I wondered to myself that they should ever try to pass laws and resolutions as small as muskeeters and nats.
"Nats are spirits," said Joyce. "I know all about it. The Burmese are frightened of them, and put little bits of rag at the top of the posts in the houses for them to live in, so that they won't come inside. Mother read that to me out of a book." We looked for the little rags, but couldn't see them, though I expect they were there. Joyce knows a lot for a girl.
"If he gives seven 'Tucktoos' without stopping, that is luck great big luck but if he goes on, he brings trouble." "Only if he stops at an odd number," corrected the child. "I see you know all about it," remarked the guest. "Oh, yes, our Tucktoo never goes beyond seven I think he is old and mother says the nats are kind to us." "The cats are kind to you!" ejaculated Shafto. "But why not?"
There are all kinds of Nats, good and bad, great and little, male and female, now living round about us.
When they came here, my friend tells me, they made a halt, and the Burmese hunters with him unpacked his breakfast. He did not want to eat then, he said, but they explained that it was not for him, but for the Nats. All his food was unpacked, cold chicken and tinned meats, and jam and eggs and bread, and it was spread neatly on a cloth under a tree.
Whether they have had a previous existence in another form, and if so, what, is a secret that they usually keep carefully to themselves, but the history of the Popa Nats is well known. Everyone who lives near the great hill can tell you that, for it all happened not so long ago.
Her eyes, like mournful lakes of darkness, were lovely in the pale ivory of her face. Her lips were nobly cut and calm, and by the favour of the Guardian Nats, she was shaped with grace and health, a worthy mother of kings.
In both lists a prominent position is given to the Four Great Kings, or Ruling Spirits of the Four Quarters, accompanied by retinues called Gandhabbas, Kumbhandas, Nâgas, and Yakkhas respectively, and similar to the Nats of Burma.
All of my readers have heard of the Nautch girls, the so-called bayaderes or dancing-girls of India; but very few, I suppose, are aware that their generic name is remotely preserved in several English Gipsy words. Nachna in Hindustani means to dance, while the Nats, who are a kind of Gipsies, are generally jugglers, dancers, and musicians.
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