41
There remains still a difficulty, but it involves the one construction quite as much as the other. It lies in the phrase ไพร่ ผ้า หน้า ใส, and more particularly in its second member, to which it seems almost impossible to assign any meaning within the natural range of its terms which shall seem at all compatible with the situation described. ไพร่ ผ้า all agree in regarding as the antique form of the phrase now known as ไพร่ ฟ้า, meaning 'people of the realm'. หน้าใส 'faces bright' is also a phrase in current use as a poetic figure for 'glad' 'cheerful'. But there seems to be no way of justifying such untimely gladness in the face of imminent disaster, or of justifying its mention here at all, even if it were actually felt. The only way out, it seems to me, is to take the whole phrase as a stock expression in rhetorical or poetic style, equivalent perhaps to something like 'loyal subjects', taking the epithet as wholly conventional—in fact a poetic commonplace like Homer's 'blameless Ethiopians' and Virgil's 'pius Æneas'. This phrase, it should be noted, occurs again, l. 21, in a context where the epithet is almost as inexplicable as it is here. On this point see further Note, l. 23 below.
This last suggestion derives support from the marked tendency toward formal and conventional phrasing throughout this inscription. This earliest written speech in the language is as yet by no means free from the leading-strings of poetry. The theme itself is essentially a ballad theme. This very phrase is a striking example of the metrical form which continually recurs here, unmistakably marked as such by the curious internal rhyme, as well as by the formal balance of its members. The conventional character of these expressions, moreover is generally marked by some isolation or obscurity of meaning attaching to one or more of their members, due, as we may imagine both to exigencies of rhyme and to the use of antiquated diction. Another feature which connects them with the ballad-forms is their capacity for impromptu variation. Two examples in this text are plainly variations of this very phrase which we are considering; namely ไพร่ ผ้า ข้า ไท l. 23, and ไพร่ ผ้า หน้า ปก l. 32—33. Indeed the modern Siamese phrase for people of the realm, ไพร่ ฟ้า ข้า แผ่นดิน, is but another variant of the same original, in which all inherited obscurity in the second member is at last cleared up by the explicit
