Sannaliyane Lyrics by Amaradeva

O tailor, O tailor,
in this early dawn,
smiling, smiling with such joy,
(for whom are you weaving this garment?)

A blue-green garment,
as lovely as a parrot’s wings,
for whom are you weaving it?

A blue-green garment,
as lovely as a parrot’s wings,
it’s for the firstborn daughter, born only yesterday,
this little garment you are weaving.

O tailor, O tailor,
in this evening hour,
trimming it, making it beautiful,
(for whom are you weaving this garment?)

A garment that shines
with the golden color of the evening sky,
for whom are you weaving it?
A garment that shines
with the golden color of the evening sky,
it’s to give the household’s eldest daughter away in marriage,
this wedding garment you are weaving.

O tailor, O tailor,
in the cold moonlight,
with a withered face and trembling hands,
for whom are you weaving the cloth, the cold cloth?
In the pale white of an egret’s wing,
the cold cloth you are weaving,
for whom are you weaving it?

In the pale white of an egret’s wing,
the cold cloth you are weaving,
it’s to cover the body of the one who has died,
this cold cloth you are weaving.

The song speaks to a village tailor at his loom, asking the same question three times across a single day: for whom are you weaving this garment? Each time the tailor answers, and through his answers the whole arc of a woman’s life passes before us. It is one of those Sinhala songs that hides a lifetime inside a simple, repeated question.

At dawn the tailor is smiling as he works. The cloth he holds is blue-green and as lovely as the wings of a mala-gira, the bright parrot, and it is tiny, because it is for a baby girl born only the day before. Then comes evening, and the same tailor is fussing over a second garment, trimming it and making it beautiful. This one shines like the golden evening sky, and it is a wedding dress, for the eldest daughter of the house who is about to be given away in marriage. The day has carried the girl from her first morning of life to the day she leaves home as a bride.

Then the song turns, and this is where it breaks your heart. Night has fallen, the moonlight is cold, and now the tailor’s own face is withered and his hands are trembling, he has grown old in the space of these few verses. The colors change with him. The bright parrot-green of birth and the warm gold of marriage give way to the pale, washed-out white of a kana kok, the egret, the color Sri Lankans associate with mourning. The cloth he weaves now is a cold one, a shroud, to cover the body of the woman who has died. The same daughter, dressed first for her birth, then for her wedding, and finally for her death.

What makes the song ache is how gently it does this. The dawn, the evening and the cold moonlight are not really three times of day, they are the morning, the noon and the night of a single human life, and the three garments are the only milestones that matter. Behind it all sits the old tailor as a quiet figure of fate or time itself, sitting at his loom and weaving every one of us from the cradle to the grave, smiling at the beginning and trembling at the end.