SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF FOLK POETRY

Folk poetry provided material seeds for its creations, in the environment in which the villager lived. All the biographies he experienced were one poem to him. There was an inseparable bond between the village and folk poetry. The home in which the child grows up, the environment around the home, the social background from which folk poetry originated. The language of the folk poet, the series of high and low melodies, was the language that the child experienced from infancy. The object seed of folk poetry was the subconscious around the child. The folk poet expresses his thoughts, wishes and feelings in a unique way, through the lifestyle that nurtures the child.

The Sinhala villager, who has an innate ability to recite poetry, bequeathed to him the ideas of poetry that came naturally to him, using the dialects inherent in the environment. As a result, folk poetry brought a new life to the village life. The bitter rural life that revolved around agricultural technology may have become a healthier environment due to the life of folk poetry.

Folk poetry, a valuable cultural element that has been around since the beginning of human civilization, was gifted to the society as an informal educational factor because it originated among the rural people and nurtured the rural hearts while protecting the rural people. Some people who express different views on the birth of folk poetry say that folk poetry may have been created from the beginning of civilization. They are of the opinion that folk poetry was the first to be learned.

It is possible that the form of folk poetry may have originated before man became civilized. Folk poetry may have evolved from prehistoric times according to the beliefs, beliefs, sacrifices and prayers in man. It is possible that even the first man in civilization expressed his thoughts, desires, and moods in a certain way. That prayer may have taken the form of singing.