HEAD HUNTERS A-WOOING
In one of the introductory chapters of this volume a brief account was given of the Dyak head-hunters. Reference was made to the fact that the more heads a man has cut off, the more he is respected. He cannot marry until he has killed a man, woman, or child, and brought home the head as a trophy, and cases are known of men having to wait two years before they could procure the skull necessary to soften the heart of the gentle beloved. "From all accounts," says Roth (II., 163),
"there can be little doubt that one of the chief incentives to getting heads is the desire to please the women … Mrs. McDougall relates an old Sakaran legend which says that the daughter of their great ancestor, who resides in heaven near the great Evening Star, refused to marry until her betrothed brought her a present worth her acceptance. The man went into the jungle and killed a deer, which he presented to her; but the fair lady turned away in disdain. He went again and returned with a mias, the great monkey [sic] who haunts the forest; but this present was not more to her taste. Then, in a fit of despair, the lover went abroad, and killed the first man that he met, and throwing his victim's head at the maiden's feet, he exclaimed at the cruelty she had made him guilty of; but to his surprise, she smiled, and said that now he had discovered the only gift worthy of herself."
Roth cites a correspondent who says:
"At this moment there are two Dyaks in the Kuching jail who acknowledge that they took the heads of two innocent Chinese with no other object in view when doing so than to secure the pseudo affections of women, who refused to marry them until they had thus proved themselves to be men."
Here is what a sweet Dyak maiden said to a young man who asked for her hand and heart:
"Why don't you go to the Saribus Fort and there take the head of Bakir (the Dyak chief), or even that of Tuan Hassan (Mr. Watson), and then I will deign to think of your desires with some degree of interest."
Says Captain Mundy (II., 222):
"No aristocratic youth dare venture to pay his addresses to a Dyak demoiselle unless he throws at the blushing maiden's feet a netful of skulls! In some districts it is customary for the young lady to desire her lover to cut a thick bamboo from the neighboring jungle, and when in possession of this instrument, she carefully arranges the cadeau d'amour on the floor, and by repeated blows beats the heads into fragments, which, when thus pounded, are scraped up and cast into the river; at the same time she throws herself into the arms of the enraptured youth, and so commences the honeymoon."
Another account of Dyak courtship (Roth, II., 166) represents a young warrior returning from a head-hunting expedition and, on meeting his beloved, holding in each hand one of the captured heads by the hair. She takes one of the heads, whereupon they dance round each other with the most extravagant gestures, amidst the applause of the Rajah and his people. The next step is a feast, at which the young couple eat together. When this is over, they have to take off whatever clothes they have on and sit naked on the ground while some of the old women throw over them handfuls of paddy and repeat a prayer that they may prove as fruitful as that grain.