Fig. 2.—Ceremony of invoking the tiger spirit.
The accompanying diagram shows (approximately) the relative positions of all who were present. In one corner of the room was the patient’s bed (sleeping-mat) and mosquito curtain with a patchwork front, and in a line parallel to the bed stood the three jars of water, each decorated with the sort of fringe or collar of plaited cocoa-nut fronds called “centipedes’ feet” (jari ’lipan), and each, too, furnished with a fresh yam-leaf covering to its mouth. A little nearer to me than the three water-jars, but in the same line, stood a fairly big jar similarly decorated, but filled with a big bouquet of artificial “flowers” and ornaments instead of the water. These flowers were skilfully manufactured from plaited strips of palm-leaf, and in addition to mere “flowers” represented such objects as rings, cocoa-nuts, centipedes, doves, and the like, all of which were made of the plaited fronds referred to. This invention was intended (I was informed) to represent a pleasure-garden (taman bunga), and indeed was so called; it was (I believe) intended to attract the spirit whom it was the object of the ceremony to invoke. In front of the three jars stood, as a matter of course, a censer filled with burning embers, and a box containing the usual accessories for the chewing of betel. Everything being now ready, the medicine-man appeared and took his seat beside the censer, his wife, an aged woman, whose office was to chant the invocation, to her own accompaniment, taking her seat at the same time near the head of the patient’s sleeping-mat. Presently she struck up the invocation (lagu pĕmanggil), and we listened in rapt attention as the voice, at first weak and feeble with age, gathered strength and wailed ever higher and shriller up to the climax at the end of the chant. At the time it was hard to distinguish the words, but I learnt from her afterwards that this was what she sang:—
“Peace be unto you, Pĕnglima Lenggang Laut!
Of no ordinary beauty
Is the Vessel of Pĕnglima Lenggang Laut!
The Vessel that is called ‘The Yellow Spirit-boat,’
The Vessel that is overlaid with vermilion and ivory,
The Vessel that is gilded all over;
Whose Mast is named ‘Prince Mĕndela,’
Whose Shrouds are named ‘The Shrouds that are silvered,’