The Lotus Lake At Bukit Gantang Was Infinitely More
Beautiful Than Under The Grayer Sky Of Friday; A Thousand Rosy Vases
Were Drinking In The Sunshine, And Ten Thousand Classic Leaves Were
Spreading Their Blue-Green Shields Below Them; All Nature Smiled And
Sang.
I was loath to exchange my good horse for a gharrie, with a Kling
driver draped slightly in Turkey-red cotton sitting on the shafts, who,
statuesque as he was, had a far less human expression than Mahmoud and
Eblis.
In the noonday the indigo-colored Hijan hills, with their
swollen waterfall coming down in a sheet of foam, looked cool, but as
we dashed through Taipeng I felt overpowered once more by what seems
the "wearing world," after beautiful, silent Kwala Kangsa, for there
are large shops with gaudy sign-boards, stalls in the streets, tribal
halls, buffalo-carts with buffaloes yoked singly, for the spread of
their huge horns is so great that they cannot be yoked in pairs; trains
of carts with cinnamon-colored, humped bullocks yoked in pairs standing
at shop doors, gharries with fiery Sumatra ponies dashing about, crowds
of Chinese coolies, busy and half-naked, filling the air with the din
of their ceaseless industry, and all the epitomized stir of a world
which toils, and strives, and thirsts for gain.
But I must give these coolies their due, for in some ways they show
more self-respect than the ordinary English laborer, inasmuch as in bad
times they don't become chargeable to anyone, and when the price of the
commodity which they produce falls, as that of tin has done, instead of
"striking" and abusing everybody all round, they accept the situation,
keep quiet, live more frugally, and work for lower wages till things
mend. But I don't intend to hold up the Taipeng Chinese as patterns of
the virtues in other respects, for they are not. They are turbulent;
and crime, growing chiefly out of their passion for gain, is very rife
among them. The first thing I heard on arriving here was that a Chinese
gang had waylaid a revenue officer in one of the narrow creeks, and
that his hacked and mutilated body had drifted down to Permatang this
morning.
Mr. Maxwell tells me that, as he returned from escorting me to Bukit
Gantang, he overtook a gharrie with a Malay woman in it, and
dismounting joined her husband who was walking, but did not speak to
the woman. to-day the man told him that his wife woke the following
night with a scream which was succeeded by a trance; and that, knowing
that a devil had entered into her, he sent for a pawan (a wise man or
sorcerer), who on arriving asked questions of the bad spirit, who
answered with the woman's tongue. "How did you come?" "With the tuan,"
i.e., Mr. Maxwell. "How did you come with him?" "On the tail of his
gray horse." "Where from?" "Changat-Jering." The husband said that
these Changat-Jering devils were very bad ones. The pawan then
exorcised the devil, and burned strong-smelling drugs under the woman's
nose, after which he came out of her, and she fell asleep, the "wise
man" receiving a fee.
I never heard of any country of such universal belief in devils,
familiars, omens, ghosts, sorceries, and witchcrafts. The Malays have
many queer notions about tigers, and usually only speak of them in
whispers, because they think that certain souls of human beings who
have departed this life have taken up their abode in these beasts, and
in some places, for this reason, they will not kill a tiger unless he
commits some specially bad aggression. They also believe that some men
are tigers by night and men by day!
The pelisit, the bad spirit which rode on the tail of Mr. Maxwell's
horse, is supposed to be the ghost of a woman who has died in
childbirth. In the form of a large bird uttering a harsh cry, it is
believed to haunt forests and burial-grounds and to afflict children.
The Malays have a bottle-imp, the polong, which will take no other
sustenance than the blood of its owner, but it rewards him by aiding
him in carrying out revengeful purposes. The harmless owl has strange
superstitions attaching to it, and is called the "specter bird;" you
may remember that the fear of encountering it was one of the reasons
why the Permatang Pasir men would not go with us through the jungle to
Rassa.
A vile fiend called the penangalan takes possession of the forms of
women, turns them into witches, and compels them to quit the greater
part of their bodies, and flyaway by night to gratify a vampire craving
for human blood. This is very like one of the ghoul stories in the
_Arabian Nights Entertainments_. Then they have a specter huntsman with
demon dogs who roams the forests, and a storm fiend who rides the
whirlwind, and spirits borrowed from Persia and Arabia. It almost seems
as if the severe monotheism to which they have been converted compels
them to create a gigantic demonology.
They have also many odd but harmless superstitions: For instance, that
certain people have the power of making themselves invulnerable by the
agency of spirits; that the regalia of the States are possessed of
supernatural powers; that the wearing of a tiger claw prevents disease;
that rude "Aeolian harps" hung up in trees will keep the forest goblins
from being troublesome; that charms and amulets worn or placed about a
house ward off many evils; that at dangerous rapids, such as those of
Jerom Pangong on the Perak river, the spirits must be propitiated by
offerings of betel-nut and bananas; that to insure good luck a betel-
chewer must invariably spit to the left; that it is unlucky either to
repair or pull down a house; that spirits can be propitiated and
diseases can be kept away by hanging up palm leaves and cages in the
neighborhood of kampongs, and many others.
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