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.
"The warrior can take away any inferior man's wife at
pleasure, and is thanked for so doing. A chief who has
twenty heads in his possession will do the same with
another who may have only ten, and upwards to the
Rajah's family, who can take any woman at pleasure."