Sedately and slowly and silently they marched the whole length of the veranda close to the wall of the apartments, and then turned in between the lines of squatting men. When the first man was reached, the procession halted, and from the bowl held by the first woman, the spoon-bearer dipped a spoonful of a muddy-looking liquid and poured it into the man’s gaping mouth. As it touched his tongue, his face was a study in contortions; when the spoon was withdrawn he tried first to smile, then his eyes were lost in wrinkles, his mouth puckered up, he looked seasick, and then with a shudder that shook his frame, gulped down his dose; the spoon-bearer passed on, then the bearer of the pork cubes halted in front of him, and Bulan, taking from the dish one of those nauseating gray, greasy, tepid cubes of raw fat, popped it dexterously into his mouth and then wiped her greasy fingers across his upturned face. Again shuddering tremors shook his frame, but—he bolted it! then gazed about him with a sickly smile. Down both lines there burst forth peals on peals of laughter; the men shouted and stamped their feet with merriment over the victim’s misery, unmindful that his fate would soon be theirs. The women tried hard to maintain their gravity, but the varied and ludicrous sufferings of their lords and masters were often too much for their dignity, and they unreservedly joined in the mirth; to those against whom they had any private grudge they administered an extra dose, or stirred up the dregs of the drink, or bestowed a particularly flabby and repulsive piece of pork. As we sat about half way down the line, we had quite a while to await our turn, and to speculate on the ingredients of the awful drink,—it was almost adequately nauseating that we should have to take it out of that family, that tribal spoon. My turn came at last. Well, it was a ghastly dose and no mistake. It was lukewarm, it was fiery hot with peppers, it was salt, it was pungent, it was sweet, it was flat, it was sour, and it tasted strongly of brass bowl. All this was administered from a spoon that without washing or wiping had been already in the mouths of thirty or forty black-toothed predecessors. Our uncontrollable and immeasurable disgust created infinite amusement and prolonged laughter, and when Bulan, full of mischievous merriment, followed with the pork cubes, knowing that she had the Tuans at her mercy, she did not leave the fraction of an inch of our faces that was not bedaubed with grease. And then how she laughed! As though one such dose was not enough, there was the prospect before us of having it, Heaven save the mark! again and again administered down to the very last woman of that long, interminable procession; first a spoonful of that appalling, unnameable liquid! then a mouthful of raw pork! The devoted Tama Bulan and Tama Talun came at length to our rescue, and told us that after the first two or three doses there would be no offence if we just dipped our finger in the drink and touched it to our tongue, and if we merely took the pork between our lips; sometimes this evasion was successful, but now and then the drink was forced upon us, and we got a worse smearing from greasy fingers. Shrewd old Laki La, profiting by experience at other similar feasts, held a tumbler under his chin, and as fast as the drink and pork were deposited in his mouth they were re-deposited in the tumbler. Tama Usong, to whose house on the Apoh River we had paid a visit only a little while before, sat next to me, and I asked him how he was getting along, and if his stomach was not nearly full. ‘Oh, no, indeed, Tuan,’ said he, laughing; ‘I long ago put my stomach out here,’ and he pointed behind him to a row, a foot long, of cubes of pork which he had surreptitiously deposited on the railing of the veranda. It was a hideous nightmare! But at last the little girls brought up the end of the procession, and then the greater part of the assembly dashed for the river to wash off a little of the fat with which their faces were fairly dripping.
Tama Talun explained to us that this was a survival of old times, when warriors returned from a head-hunt, and sat thus and were obliged to take in their mouths a small piece of their enemy’s flesh, served to them just as the fat pork is served now-a-days. They were not to swallow the human flesh, but merely hold it between their lips to show contempt for the enemy, and also thereby to absorb his valour. Dr. Hose, when told of this interpretation, asserted that the object of this ceremony is to impress evil Spirits, who, when they see so many men with faces smeared with food, will be led to think that a very great feast had taken place in honor of the newly named children, and that, therefore, these children must be most important people, and to harm them would stir the anger of a vast multitude. Dr. Hose’s knowledge of the Kenyahs extends over so many years that it is venturesome to dissent from him; nevertheless, our interpretation was received directly from an unusually intelligent native, while the ceremony was going on before us, and was, moreover, given voluntarily without any questions on our part. Dr. Hose rejects this interpretation, because of his conviction that cannibalism, in any form whatsoever, never existed in Borneo.
MUJAN, ONE OF THE BELLES OF TAMA BULAN’S HOUSEHOLD.
(From a photograph taken, and kindly loaned, by Professor A. C. Haddon, F. R. S.)
By the time we had returned to our places in the veranda, after having washed off in the river the abhorred grease from our faces, the women had doffed their uncomfortable burdens of finery and were squatting among the men, in a close group round Tama Bulan, who was cutting the rattan bindings of several more large jars of arrack. The Chief was the first to quaff the beverage, and as he lifted the cup to his lips the whole assemblage began to intone a continuous ‘oo-oo-oo-oo,’ in harmony but with a deep bass predominant, and kept up this resonant accompaniment until the last drop was drained. After Tama Bulan, the guests were served in turn, and as each one lifted the cup to his lips (and it must be drained to the last drop at one draught) this ‘oo-oo’-ing rose and fell like a bewildering, deafening humming in the ears; it was to me a noteworthy experience; unquestionably it marvellously accelerates the action of the alcohol in the arrack. When the cup had been passed round several times to each man and woman, and the oo-oo-ing was becoming somewhat discordant and boisterous, the door of one of the rooms was flung open and the genuine feast was brought in, piled high in three small canoes borne on the shoulders of men staggering under the weight. One-half of each canoe was heaped with little packages of boiled rice wrapped in green banana leaves and tied with pieces of grass; the other half fairly bristled, like a fretful porcupine, with bamboo skewers whereon were several bits of boiled pork. (It will, perhaps, be noted that a feast does not consist in variety or quality, but in quantity.) Here and there among the guests were placed bowls of salted fish pulverised, and to each guest were given a packet of rice and a stickful of meat, while Tama Bulan shouted the hospitable injunction, ‘Kuman plahei plahei’—Eat slowly, slowly! There was no stint; everyone was freely at liberty to have as many portions of rice and of meat as he could eat, and was welcome to help himself to all he wished of the dried fish.
In my packet of rice there was a little discoloration at one end, that looked like iron rust, but Ma Obat, a one-eyed and villainous-looking old fellow, who sat beside me, seeing that I scrutinized the spot rather carefully, politely took the lump of rice out of my hand, and with a thumb-nail that looked, I must say, like a coal-heaver’s shovel, scraped away the dubious portion and then handed the lump back to me. The discolored grains were gone, but, woe’s me, they were replaced by several grimy finger-marks. For the sake of his triumphant and kindly beaming smile I could not refuse to eat it, and so with eyes fixed on the rafters overhead,—it was bolted!
This feast marked the conclusion of the ceremonies, and we stuffed and smoked, and then as darkness was beginning to fall, Dr. Hiller and I, with several of the young men, strolled down the veranda to pay respectful visits in the family rooms. In Mujan’s room, I am sorry to say, we found both Mujan and her elder sister in a state of—well, intoxication; the arrack and the oo-oo-ing had been too much for them. Ordinarily, they were quiet, demure girls, the belles of the veranda, and industrious workers at rice-pounding. But such lapses are, according to Kenyah morality, by no means unpardonable, nay, at such a high tide and festival as the present, were to be rather applauded as a great and ladylike compliment to the host. Mujan and her sister were sitting with their backs against the partition; the head of the elder reclined on the shoulder of the younger, and, though awake, she gave, from time to time, a sighing snore. Mujan, the younger, was trying to entertain a group of visitors, and her fingers were crumpling cigarette wrappers and tobacco in a futile attempt to make some cigarettes for her friends. All she could murmur to us was,’Aku mabok, Tuan, Aku mabok’—I’m drunk, sirs, I’m drunk. We stayed only a few minutes, joking with her about her state, and then went with the others to visit Sara, another fashionable belle, who, however, in our eyes, was far from personally attractive; she had lost four of her upper front teeth; their loss made her conversation anything but easy to understand. When we arrived, Sara had retired to her modicum of a sleeping-room, but she was persuaded to emerge, and then she announced that the arrack had given her a severe headache. Deng’s elder brother,—I forget his name,—at once volunteered to apply cups to her temple, and she acquiesced. She provided the cupping instrument, which consisted of a small cylinder of bamboo, sealed at one end with a lump of wax. The operator, with a small knife, scratched four or five little wounds on her temple, and then making a small hole through the lump of wax on the bamboo cylinder he applied the open end to the wound and proceeded to suck the air out of the cylinder with his lips. When the air was sufficiently exhausted he closed the hole in the wax with his teeth, and the bamboo remained adhering to her temple, like a horn. She smiled, chatted, and never once winced throughout the whole operation, and after about half an ounce of blood had been drawn pronounced herself much better.
