[156] — See vol. ii., p. 11.
[157] — Although breach of custom and of LALI by any individual may bring misfortune on the whole household, the offending individual is regarded as specially liable to wasting sickness with diarrhoea and spitting of blood.
[158] — We have a wooden image of this being. It is rudely anthropomorphic, and is covered with fish-like scales. Its sex is indeterminate. He is supposed to ascend the river from the sea, kneeling on the back of a sting-ray.
[159] — The sword handle is sometimes made of hard wood, but generally of deer's horn, very elaborately carved (see Pl. 129). It seems possible that this elaborate carving which, in spite of many minor variations, is of only two fundamental types, is or was at one time connected with this myth. But we have not been able to get any statement to this effect.
[160] — The creeper is here regarded as the male partner.
[161] — Cf. an Iban story given in Perham's "Sea-Dayak Gods," J.S.B.R.A. SOC. ix. 236.
[162] — This greeting of the passer-by and the charging him with some commission is very characteristic of the Ibans.
[163] — A form of trial by ordeal occasionally practised by Ibans and other tribes.
[164] — This refers to the difference of colour between the carapace and the plastron.
[165] — Refers to the flat under surface contrasting with the rounded back.