Folk-lore in Borneo

by William Henry Furness

I think there can be no doubt that Si Kira bestowed a great blessing on the Dayaks when he gave them rice; but I am very sure that he saddled them with a dire affliction when he introduced to them the omen-birds; more procrastination, failure of expeditions, and exasperation of soul can be laid to the score of these birds than to anything else on earth. There is hardly an undertaking, however slight, that can be begun without first consulting these wretched birds. Yet it is hardly to be wondered at, that all tribes should hold the birds to be little prophets of the jungle, dashing across man's path, at critical moments, to bless or to ban. In the deep jungle, which at high noon is as silent as "sunless retreats of the ocean," gay-plumaged birds are not sitting on every bough singing plaintive, melodious notes; such lovely pictures exist solely in the mind of the poet or of him who has never visited the tropics. In the thick tangle of leaves and branches overhead, the larger birds are seen with difficulty, even after considerable practice, and the smaller birds appear as but a flash of light, as they dart through the interlacing palms and vines; the apparition, with its sudden gleam and instant disappearance, starts the impulse to make a wish, as when we see a star shoot across the heavens. This same natural and almost irresistible impulse, which we have all experienced, I suggest as one of the explanations of the tendency of the Bornean mind to accept the birds as the intelligent forerunners of good or ill. These unsophisticated natives wander forth with some wish in their hearts, and should a bird of the right species (for not all birds are omen-birds) cross their path, the fulfilment of their wishes is established beyond a doubt by its mere appearance, and it is to be feared (for they are mortal) that if they do not want to see the bird—well, there are none so blind as those who won't see. When it comes to taking omens for such an important event as the planting of rice, or for going on the warpath, then the ceremony extends over ten days or two weeks, and the opinion of the small barking deer also must be consulted; furthermore, the whole household is under the ban of a taboo, or permantang, as they call it, and the people must all stay indoors while the three men who are appointed as searchers are abroad on their omen-seeking errand. So firm is their trust in the wisdom of the birds that even if they have worked for months at a clearing they will abandon it and never plant it, if the omens at the time of sowing be unfavorable. Certain birds must be seen on the right hand to be favorable, while others are most propitious when they soar overhead, or give a shrill cry on the left; on more than one occasion, when traveling in native canoes, a bird which ought to have appeared on the right has been seen on the left, and, to my utter bewilderment, without a word the boat has been swung round in the stream so as to bring to the right what was on the left, thus slyly fabricating a bad omen into a good one, and for some distance we have gone in the opposite direction, but now with highly favorable omens. When they conclude that the bird has forgotten his warning or lost sight of us, the boat has been again turned, fate has been deceived, and we journey on as before. Once our whole party of eight or ten boats had to pull up at the bank and walk through the jungle for a quarter of a mile or so to make a bothersome white-headed hawk think that he had mistaken the object of our expedition. When a favorable bird has been seen, a fire of chips is at once built on the bank of the river, thereby letting the bird know that his kind attention has been appreciated, Fire is always the go-between of man and the birds, or any of the spirits; it forms an important part in the ceremonies of consecration and absolution, and by means of fire a man may break through a taboo, or permantang. Should a man have a fruit-tree, for instance, which he wishes to protect, he places about it several cleft sticks with stones thrust in the clefts, and the stones are told to guard the tree and afflict with dire diseases any pilferer of the fruit. Now, should a friend of the owner see this sign of permantang and yet wish some of the fruit, let him but build a fire and commission the fire to tell the stones that he is a friend of the owner, and that it is all right if he takes the fruit; then, when the fire is burnt out, the fruit may be taken with impunity. In the ceremony of naming a child, the sacrificial pig is touched with a fire brand before it is harangued by the Dayong, or medicine man; and to determine whether or not the chosen name be propitious, the strip of rattan which has been used on the fire-saw to obtain the sacred fire, is bent into a loop until its ends just meet; it is then set on fire in the middle and allowed to burn through. If the two pieces thus made are of uneven length the name is good; if they are both the same length another name must be selected. The ashes from this burning are made into a paste and smeared on the child's forehead just before it is deluged with a bowl of cold water, and the name is made public for the first time. It is strange what a similarity exists in different races relative to this ceremony of giving a name. Why water should be used to confirm the rite, they cannot themselves explain, except by saying that it is a custom handed down to them from their grandfathers and their great-great-grandfathers. It can hardly have suggested itself to the minds of the Borneans as an element of purification and cleansing; to their mind water does not possess these properties. Water is good to drink when you are thirsty, and refreshing to bathe in when you are hot, that is all; dirt has no horrors to the Bornean mind, and after a plunge in the river has refreshed the body, the Kayan, Dayak, Kenyah, Sibop, or whatever the tribe, will put on the same dirty waist-cloth or cotton jacket that has never known soap, and has seldom if ever been nearer the water than when on the back of its owner. Perhaps it is that water is symbolic of life and motion; the river is always moving, it murmurs and talks to itself, a draft of its coolness and a plunge into its embrace adds new life to man; why should it not be the giver of life? In almost all the native languages of Borneo the word for water and river is the same; even when water is brought up into the house it is still the river, and when they drink, they drink the river; when they boil their rice they boil in the river, and when they name their children they pour the river over them. Many subtribes or households take their name from the river on which they live, as, for instance, the Long Patas who live, or used to live, at the mouth of the Pata river (Long meaning junction of one river with another), the Long Kiputs, the Long Lamas, and many others that might be named, including the whole tribe of the Kayans, who take their name from the great Kayan river which empties into the sea on the East coast. If a river that is new to them be visited, the spirits of that stream must be always propitiated lest they resent the intrusion and drown the visitor. It is the custom among the Bukits, one of the most primitive tribes, for the youths, when they reach the bank of a new river, to divest themselves of every article of clothing, save a chaplet of leaves, which they twist from the vines near at hand; then crouching at the edge of the water, they toss some personal ornament, such as a brass ear-ring or a bright bead, far out into mid-stream, and at the same instant scoop up a handful of the water; gazing earnestly into the few drops which they hold in their palm, they invoke the spirits of the river to protect them, and implore permission to enter the new territory. Not until this rite is completed would they dare to bathe in the stream.

A Scene on the Dapoi River.

To revert to the subject of names; from all that I have read, and from personal observation, it seems that all Borneans recognize the sanctity of names; of this we may find traces among all the primitive people of the earth. Before the formal ceremony of naming a child, for instance, has been performed, the child has no recognized place in the community, and a mother in enumerating her children would never think of mentioning one that had died before it was named, even though it had lived a year. Before the ceremony, the intended name is known to no one except the parents, and, for them to mention it, is strictly permantang until the river water has been poured on the child's head. A Kayan will never tell you his name, but when asked he invariably turns to some one sitting near him and asks him to pronounce the name which to the owner is ineffable. For a man to mention the name of his dead father or mother is a reckless flying in the face of providence. After a serious illness the name should be changed and never uttered again, lest the evil spirits revisit their victim; under a new name they will be likely to pass him by. On one occasion, recognizing a man that I had seen on a former visit, but, at the moment forgetting his name, I enquired what it was; the name, however, struck me as entirely unfamiliar. He afterward acknowledged that he had been very sick since I last saw him and now bore a new name; only the assurance that the spirits could not harm him through a white man induced him at last to whisper to me his former name. This change of name to deceive the fates extends even to inanimate objects, and to animals which are to be caught or trapped. When hunting for camphor, the name of the object of their search must be never mentioned; it is always spoken of as "the thing that smells." Even all the instruments, which they use in collecting the valuable drug, have fanciful names, while the searchers talk in a language invented solely for those who collect camphor. Unless they conform to all these requirements, the camphor crystals, which in this particular variety are found only in the crevices of the wood, will elude them and their search be fruitless. When the people go Tuba fishing, which consists of poisoning the stream with the juice of the Tuba root, and thus stupefying the fish and making them rise to the surface, where they can be easily caught in nets or speared, they never say that they are going after fish, but after the leaves which float down stream.

These and many other customs relative to the naming of things are all founded on the same idea of the potency and mysticism inherent in a name, which may be found in the legends of the old Egyptians, wherein the power of the great king and god Ra depended on the fact that no one knew his real name, until Isis by stratagem got it from him; and forthwith his power left him. It was this same idea that prevented the Hebrew from ever speaking the name of the Most High; it is probably the same thought which prompts the Japanese to change a person's name after death lest by mentioning the one known during life the spirit of the dead should be recalled from the other world.

The downfall of the god Ra brings to mind another superstition of which I have noticed a remnant among the Borneans also, the power of working charms with the saliva. When the great god Ra became so old that he no longer had control of his lower jaw, Isis collected some of his saliva which dropped upon the ground below his throne, and mixing it with clay, made a snake of it. (I quote from the "Turin Papyrus," of which Mr. Edward Clodd gives a translation in his recent and valuable little book called "Tom Tit Tot.") This snake Isis left in Ra's path; as he passed by, it bit him, and to relieve him of his agony Isis persuaded him that the only thing to be done was to tell her his true name that she might drive out the pain from his bones. This he finally did, and with disastrous results. I instance this to show the antiquity of the superstition that the saliva is potent as an ingredient of charms; the Kayans illustrate this, in the manner whereby they elude an evil spirit which may have been following them on a journey on the river. They build a small archway of boughs on the bank just before they arrive at their destination. Underneath this arch, they build a fire and, in single file, all pass under, stepping over the fire and spitting into it as they pass; by this act they thoroughly exorcise the evil spirits and emerge on the other side free from all baleful influence. Another instance, is where they are throwing aside the signs of mourning for the dead; during the period of mourning they may not cut their hair nor shave their temples, but as soon as the mourning is ended by the ceremony of bringing home a newly-taken head, the barber's knife is kept busy enough. As every man leaves the barber's hands, he gathers up the hair, and, spitting on it, murmurs a prayer to the evil spirits not to harm him. He then blows the hair out of the verandah of the house.

All these parallelisms, in the modes of thinking, among men in far removed quarters of the earth, do not, I think, necessarily imply that there has been a transmission of thought from one race to the other, but that there is a certain round of thought through which the brain leads us, and in development we must all have followed along the same path. Some races have made more rapid strides than others, possibly owing to natural surroundings, and in their strides have left the others centuries behind. Almost within the memory of our grandfathers, in this country, witches were burned, and from this there is only a step back to the Dayong of Borneo. Indeed, whosoever sees these people and lives with them their everyday life, must regard them, after a not very long time, merely as backward pupils in the school of life. Let me say in conclusion, that he would have an unresponsive heart that could not feel linked in a bond of fellowship with these people, and that God has made of only one blood all nations of the earth, when he hears a Bornean mother crooning her child to sleep with words identical in sentiment with "Rock-a-bye Baby,"—what though the mother's earlobes are elongated many an inch by heavy copper rings, her arms tattooed to the elbow, and her blackened teeth filed to points. Once upon a time I heard a Kayan mother soothing her little baby to sleep, and the words of the lullaby which I learned are as follows:—

From the River's mouth the birds are straying,

And the Baiyo's topmost leaves are swaying;

The little chicks cheep,