As Datu Isa finished the Pontianak story, we all clamoured for more. The old lady loved to see our interest, and went on telling us many other superstitions: Unless you cover the heads of sleeping children with black cloth, and put a torn fishing net on the top of their mosquito curtains, the birds, Geruda, Dogan, and Konieh (supposed to be eagles), will come close to them and cause convulsions. You must put knives or pinang cutters near your babies, and when walking out with them you must take these instruments with you, until your babies can walk alone. Then turning to me, Datu Isa would say: “I hope you will never see the sun set under the fragment of a rainbow, Rajah Ranee, for that is a certain portent that the Rajah’s wife must die, although rainbows in other portions of the sky do not matter if you know how to address them. When my children and grandchildren are out in the garden, and a rainbow arches over the sky, we pluck the heads off the more gaily coloured flowers and place them on the children’s heads, and say: ‘Hail, King of the Sky, we have come out to meet you in our finest clothes.’” It is unlucky for a child to lie on its face and kick up its legs, this being a sure sign the father or mother will fall sick. When a woman expects a baby, the roof of her house must not be mended, nor must her husband cut his hair or his nails. During this time a guest must not be entertained for one night only; they must stay two. When a woman dies in childbirth, during the fasting month of the Muhammadans, she becomes an “orang alim” (a good spirit), and all the sins she may have committed are forgiven her.