Haris de Silva’s account of Sardiel’s hanging [Sat Mag 18/7] has been illustrated with a picture of a wild looking man[rather like the Maname Veddah king] who is NOT Sardiel but his "multi-ethnic" sidekick Mammalay Marikkar. The photo of Sardiel in jail shows him as a rather effeminate chap,with his arm in a sling, seated flanked by a pill-box hatted but barefooted constable.

Bandu de Silva’s  yarn of the bitten ear is a still persistent rural myth - far older than 1960 [as Haris conjectures]. I clearly remember an old Ammay relating this yarn in 1938.