16. LAKI MAE
(From the Saputans; kampong Data Láong)
The wife of Laki Mae was pregnant and wanted to eat meat, so she asked her husband to go out hunting. He brought in a porcupine, wild hens, kidyang, pig, and deer, and he placed all the meat on the tehi, to smoke it over fire, that it should keep. But the right hind leg of the porcupine was hung up by itself unsmoked, to be eaten next day. They had their evening meal and then went to sleep. In the night she bore an infant son, and, therefore, next morning another woman came to do the cooking. She took the hind leg and before proceeding to cook it, washed it. It slipped through a hole in the floor to the ground underneath. Looking through the hole she saw a small male child instead of the leg, and she told Mae of this.
"Go and take this child up and bring it here. It is good luck," he said. "It is my child too." It was brought up to the room and washed and laid to the wife's breast, but the child would not suckle. Mae said: "It is best to give him a name now. Perhaps he will suckle then." He then asked the child if it wanted to be called Nonjang Dahonghavon, and the child did not. Neither did it want Anyang Mokathimman, nor Samoling, nor Samolang. It struck him that perhaps he might like to be called Sapit (leg) Tehotong which means "Porcupine Leg," and the child began to suckle at once. The child of the woman was given a name two months later, Lakin Kudyáng.
For two years the mother suckled the two, and then they were old enough to play behind the houses of the kampong. They saw many birds about, and they asked their father to give each of them a sumpitan. When they went out hunting the human boy got one bird, but the other boy got two. Next time the woman's son killed a plandok (mouse-deer), but the other one secured a pig. Their father was angry over this and said to "Porcupine Leg": "Go and kill the two old bears and bring the young ones here." He had recently seen two bears, with one cub each, under the roots of a tree in the neighbourhood. The boy went, and the bears attacked him and tried to bite him, but with his parang he killed both of them, and brought the cubs along to the kampong, bringing besides the two dead bears. The father again sent him out, this time to a cave where he knew there were a pair of tiger-cats and one cub. "Go and kill the pair and bring the cub here," he said. Again the boy was successful. Laki Mae did not like this and was angry.
In the evening "Porcupine Leg" said to his brother: "I have a long time understood that father is angry with me. Tomorrow morning I am going away. I am not eating, and I will look for a place to die." His brother began to weep, and said he would go with him. Next morning they told their father they were going to hunt for animals and birds. But when they did not return in the evening, nor later, the mother said: "I think they will not come back." Half a month later many men attacked the kampong. Laki Mae fought much and was tired. "If the boys had remained this would not have happened," the people said angrily to him. In the meantime the human son began to long to return, and he persuaded "Porcupine Leg" to accompany him. They both came back and helped to fight the enemy, who lost many dead and retired.
NOTE.—This story is also found with the Penihings, from whom undoubtedly it is derived. Laki, see No. 10. Tehi, see No. 12.