Malay Magic: Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay PeninsulaSkeat, Walter William
Religion
Malay Magic: Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula
Skeat, Walter William
Magic -- Malay Peninsula; Malays (Asian people) -- Folklore; Malays (Asian people) -- Social life and customs
"Ho, Sir 'Pointed-Hoof,'
Sir 'Sharp-Muzzle,'
Do you step upon this snare that I have spread
Within two days or three.
If you do not step upon this snare that I have spread
Within two days or three,
You shall be choked to death with blood in your throat,
You shall be in sore straits within the limits of your own
Big Jungle.
At sea you shall get no drink,
Ashore you shall get no food,
By virtue of," etc.
Hunting-Dogs
Hunting-dogs are spoken to continually as if they were human
beings. Several examples of this occur in the deer charms.
Thus we find the following passage addressed to the dogs:--
"Let not go the scent,
Formidable were you from the first;
Hot-foot, hot-foot, do you pursue,
If you do not pursue hot-foot,
I will minimise my benediction (lit. my 'Peace be with you').
If it (the deer) be a buck, you shall have him for a brother;
If it be a doe, you shall have her for a wife."
So too, again, after calling several dogs by name, the Pawang gets
together the accessories (leaves of the tukas and lenjuang, a brush
of leaves (sa-cherek) and a black cloth), and exclaims:--
"Bark, Sir Slender-foot; bark, Sir Brush-tail."
The Pawang generally tries to deceive the deer as to his ownership
of the hunting-dogs. Thus he will say:--
"It is not I whose dogs these are,
It is the magical deer Pawang whose dogs these are."
So, too, they are called by certain specific names (according to
their breed and colour), which are in several cases identical with
the names of the dogs with which the wild Spectre Huntsman (the
most terrible of all personified diseases in the Malay category)
hunts down his prey. [320]
Ugliness is by no means looked upon as a disadvantage, but rather
the opposite. An ugly dog is apparently formidable. Thus we find a
dog addressed as follows:--
"Let not go the scent (of the quarry)
As you were formidable (lit. ugly) [321] from the first."
Again, the description of the "good points" of some of these dogs
which is given in the Appendix would, if ugliness and formidability are
convertible terms, satisfy the most exacting whipper-in, the so-called
good points being for the most part a mere list of deformities. These
points, however, are merely the external sign of the Luck to which
dogs, as well as human beings, are believed to be born. In a fine
passage we are told:--
"From the seven Hills and the seven Valleys
Comes the intense barking of my Dogs.
My Dogs are Dogs of Luck,
Not Luck that is adventitious,
But Luck incarnate with their bodies.
Go tread upon the heaped and rotting leaves,
And never desert the scent."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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