Sahari tidak memandang tuan.[14]
“Nocturnal birds are generally considered ill-omened all over the world, and popular superstition among the Malays fosters a prejudice against one species of owl. If it happens to alight and hoot near a house, the inhabitants say significantly that there will soon be ‘tearing of cloth’ (koyah kapan) for a shroud. This does not apply to the small owl called punggok, which, as soon as the moon rises, may often be heard to emit a soft plaintive note. The note of the punggok is admired by the Malays, who suppose it to be sighing for the moon, and find in it an apt simile for a desponding lover.
“The baberek or birik-birik, another nocturnal bird, is a harbinger of misfortune. This bird is said to fly in flocks at night; it has a peculiar note, and a passing flock makes a good deal of noise. If these birds are heard passing, the Pêrak peasant brings out a sĕngkalan (a wooden platter on which spices are ground), and beats it with a knife, or other domestic utensil, calling out as he does so: “Nenek, bawa hati-nia” (“Great-grandfather, bring us their hearts”). This is an allusion to the belief that the bird baberek flies in the train of the Spectre Huntsman (hantu pemburu), who roams Malay forests with several ghostly dogs, and whose appearance is the forerunner of disease or death. “Bring us their hearts” is a mode of asking for some of his game, and it is hoped that the request will delude the hantu pemburu into the belief that the applicants are raʿiyat, or followers of his, and that he will, therefore, spare the household.
“The baberek,[15] which flies with the wild hunt, bears a striking resemblance to the white owl, Totosel, the nun who broke her vow, and now mingles her “tutu” with the “holloa” of the Wild Huntsman of the Harz.[16]
“The legend of the Spectre Huntsman is thus told by the Pêrak Malays:—
“In former days, at Katapang, in Sumatra, there lived a man whose wife, during her pregnancy, was seized with a violent longing for the meat of the pelandok (mouse-deer). But it was no ordinary pelandok that she wanted. She insisted that it should be a doe, big with male offspring, and she bade her husband go and seek in the jungle for what she wanted. The man took his weapons and dogs and started, but his quest was fruitless, for he had misunderstood his wife’s injunctions, and what he sought was a buck pelandok, big with male offspring, an unheard-of prodigy.
“Day and night he hunted, slaying innumerable mouse-deer, which he threw away on finding that they did not fulfil the conditions required.
“He had sworn a solemn oath on leaving home that he would not return unsuccessful, so he became a regular denizen of the forest, eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the animals which he slew, and pursuing night and day his fruitless search. At length he said to himself: ‘I have hunted the whole earth over without finding what I want; it is now time to try the firmament.’ So he holloa’d on his dogs through the sky, while he walked below on the earth looking up at them, and after a long time, the hunt still being unsuccessful, the back of his head, from constantly gazing upwards, became fixed to his back, and he was no longer able to look down at the earth. One day a leaf from the tree called Si Limbak fell on his throat and took root there, and a straight shoot grew upwards in front of his face.[19] In this state he still hunts through Malay forests, urging on his dogs as they hunt through the sky, with his gaze evermore turned upwards.[20]
“His wife, whom he left behind when he started on the fatal chase, was delivered in due time of two children—a boy and a girl. When they were old enough to play with other children, it chanced one day that the boy quarrelled with the child of a neighbour with whom he was playing. The latter reproached him with his father’s fate, of which the child had hitherto been ignorant, saying: ‘Thou art like thy father, who has become an evil spirit, ranging the forests day and night, and eating and drinking no man knows how. Get thee to thy father.’
“Then the boy ran crying to his mother and related what had been said to him. ‘Do not cry,’ said she, ‘it is true, alas! that thy father has become a spirit of evil.’ On this the boy cried all the more, and begged to be allowed to join his father. His mother yielded at last to his entreaties, and told him the name of his father and the names of the dogs. He might be known, she said, by his habit of gazing fixedly at the sky and by his four weapons—a blow-pipe (sumpitan), a spear, a kris, and a sword (klewang). ‘And,’ added she, ‘when thou hearest the hunt approaching, call upon him and the dogs by name, and repeat thy own name and mine, so that he may know thee.’