Brooke, Margaret, Lady, 1849-1936; Queens -- Malaysia -- Sarawak -- Biography; Sarawak (Malaysia) -- Description and travel
“Bessiong returned to the rice farm and managed to track the pig some
way by the spots of blood. When these came to an end he looked up
and found he had wandered into an unknown country. He roamed about,
and at last came to a great village inhabited by a strange people,
living in very large houses. Looking into one of the houses, he saw
that the people were holding incantations over one of the inmates.
When the people, from inside the house, saw the stranger, they called
out to him and asked him where he had come from. Bessiong told them,
and asked permission to enter the house. This they said he might do
if he could doctor, as the Rajah’s daughter was dying and none of
their medicine men could save her. Bessiong, agreeing to try and make
her well again, was taken to see the patient, who, he was told, was
suffering from a wound in the neck. On looking at the wound, he saw the
end of his father-in-law’s spear sticking into it. Bessiong said he
could cure her, but that he must first go outside to obtain remedies;
accordingly he went, and returned in a short time with a piece of
bamboo and a cloth. He covered the girl’s head and neck over with the
cloth, extracted the spear-head, and slipped it in the bamboo. He then
instructed the people to give her certain remedies, and in a short time
the wound healed and the girl recovered.
“The Rajah, grateful to Bessiong, gave him his daughter in marriage.
They lived together for a year or two, and one day she took her husband
down to bathe. She showed him two wells, and confessed that she and
her people were a pig tribe. She told him that if they bathed in one
of these wells, they were turned into pigs, and were restored to their
human form by bathing in the other well. She asked him to dip his leg
into the pig well, and when Bessiong did so, it was changed into a
pig’s leg. He then dipped it into the other well, when his leg was
immediately restored to its original shape. After a time, Bessiong
became rather weary of the company of his pig wife, and wished to
return to his father-in-law’s village. His wife then warned him that if
ever he met a herd of pigs swimming across a river, he must be careful
not to kill the middle one, for it would be herself. At the same time,
she informed him that she intended to swallow all her jewels and turn
into a pig. She cautioned him that if he did happen to kill her, he
would die himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account