The Dance Was A Spirited Movement Forward And Backward With Peculiar Steps Accompanied By The Swaying Of The Body.

The evolutions of the two dancers were slightly different.

In October a patrouille of seventeen native soldiers and nine native convicts, under command of a lieutenant, passed through the kampong. In the same month in 1907 a patrouille had been killed here by the Murungs. It must be admitted that the Dayaks had reason to be aggrieved against the lieutenant, who had sent two Malays from Tumbang Topu to bring to him the kapala's attractive wife - an order which was obeyed with a tragic sequence. The following night, which the military contingent passed at the kampong of the outraged kapala, the lieutenant and thirteen soldiers were killed. Of course the Dayaks had to be punished; the government, however, took the provocation into account.

The kapala's wife and a female companion demanded two florins each for telling folklore, whereupon I expressed a wish first to hear what they were able to tell. The companion insisted on the money first, but the kapala's wife, who was a very nice woman, began to sing, her friend frequently joining in the song. This was the initial prayer, without which there could be no story-telling. She was a blian, and her way of relating legends was to delineate stories in song form, she informed me. As there was nobody to interpret I was reluctantly compelled to dispense with her demonstration, although I had found it interesting to watch the strange expression of her eyes as she sang and the trance-like appearance she maintained.

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