of Kuâla Trenggânu, I have spoken of suicide as being of very rare
occurrence among Malays of either sex, and, indeed, I know of no
authenticated case in which a man of these people has taken his life
with his own hand. A Chinaman, who has had a difference of opinion with
a friend, or who conceives that he has been ill-treated by the Powers
that be, betakes himself to his dwelling, and there deliberately hangs
himself with his pig-tail, dying happy in the pleasing belief that his
spirit will haunt those who have done him a wrong, and render the
remainder of their lives upon earth 'one demned horrid grind.' Not so
the Malay. He, being gifted with the merest rudiments of an imagination,
prefers to take practical vengeance on his kind by means of a knife, to
trusting to such supernatural retaliation as may be effected after death
by his ghost.
This story deals with a suicide which occurred in Pahang in July 1893,
and I have selected it to tell, because the circumstances were
remarkable, and are quite unprecedented in my experience.
If you go up the Pahang River for a hundred and eighty miles, you come
to a spot where the stream divides into two main branches, and where the
name Pahang dies an ignominious death in a small ditch, which debouches
at their point of junction. The right stream,--using the term in its
topographical sense,--is the Jelai, and the left is the Tembeling. If
you go up the latter, you come to rapids innumerable, a few _gambir_
plantations, and a great many of the best ruffians in the Peninsula, who
are also my very good friends. If you follow the Jelai up past Kuâla
Lipis, where the river of the latter name falls into it on its right
bank, and on, and on, and on, you come to the Sâkai country, where the
Malay language is still unknown, and where the horizon of the people is
formed by the impenetrable jungle that shuts down on the other side of a
slender stream, and is further narrowed by the limitations of an
intellect which cannot conceive an arithmetical idea higher than the
numeral three. Before you run your nose into these uncleanly places,
however, you pass through a district dotted with scattered Malay
habitations; and, if you turn off up the Telang River, you find a little
open country, and some prosperous-looking villages.
One day in July 1893, a feast in honour of a wedding was being held in
one of these places, and the scene was a lively one. The head and skin
of a buffalo, and the pools of blood, which showed where its carcase
had been dismembered, were a prominent feature in the foreground, lying
displayed in a very unappetising manner on a little piece of open
ground. In one part of the village two men were posturing in one of the
inane sword-dances which are so dear to all Malays, each performance
being a subject of keen criticism or hearty admiration to the
spectators. The drums and gongs meanwhile beat a rhythmical time, which
makes the heaviest heels long to move more quickly, and the onlookers
whooped and yelled again and again in shrill far-sounding chorus. The
shout is the same as that which is raised by Malays when in battle; and,
partly from its tone, and partly from association, one never hears it
without a thrill, and some sympathetic excitement. It has a similar
effect upon the Malays, who love to raise a _sôrak_,--as these choric
shouts are termed,--and the enthusiasm which it arouses is felt to be
infectious, and speedily becomes maddening and intense.
All the men present were dressed in many-coloured silks and tartans, and
were armed with daggers as befits warriors, but, if you had an eye for
such things, you would have noticed that all the garments and weapons
were worn in a manner which would have excited the ridicule of a
down-country Malay. It is not in Europe only, that the country cousin
furnishes food for laughter to his relatives in the towns.
In a _Bâlai_, specially erected for the purposes of the feast, a number
of priests, and pilgrims, and _lebai_,--that class of fictitious
religious mendicants, whose members are usually some of the richest men
in the villages they inhabit,--were seated gravely intoning the
_Kurân_, but stopping to chew betel-nut, and to gossip scandalously, at
frequent intervals. The wag, too, was present among them, for he is an
inevitable feature in all Malay gatherings, and he is generally one of
the local holy men. 'It ain't precisely what 'e says, it's the _funny_
way 'e says it;'--for, like the professionally comic man all the world
over, these individuals are popularly supposed to be invariably amusing,
and a loud guffaw goes up whenever they open their mouths, no matter
what the words that issue from them. Most of his hearers had heard his
threadbare old jokes any time these twenty years, but the ready laughter
greeted each of them in turn, as though they were newly born into the
world. A Malay does not understand that a joke may pall from repetition,
and is otherwise liable to be driven into the ground. He will ask for
the same story, or the same jest time after time; prefers that it should
be told in the same manner, and in the same words; and will laugh in the
same place, with equal zest, at each repetition, just as do little
children among ourselves. A similar failure to appreciate the eternal
fitness of things, causes a Malay _Râja_, when civilised, to hang seven
copies of the same unlovely photograph around the walls of his
sitting-room.
Meanwhile, the women-folk had come from far and near, to help to prepare
the feast, and the men, having previously done the heavy work of
carrying the water, hewing the firewood, jointing the meat, and crushing
the curry stuff, they were all busily engaged in the back premises of
the house, cooking as only Malay women can cook, and keeping up a
constant babble of shrill trebles, varied by an occasional excited
scream of direction from one of the more senior women among them. The
younger and prettier girls had carried their work to the door of the
house, and thence were engaging at long range in the game of 'eye
play,'--as the Malays call it,--with the youths of the village, little
heeding the havoc they were making in susceptible male breasts, whose
wounds, however, they would be ready enough to heal, as occasion
offered, with a limitless generosity.
The bride, of course, having being dressed in her best, and loaded with
gold ornaments, borrowed from many miles around, which had served to
deck every bride in the district ever since any one could remember, was
left seated on the _geta_, or raised sleeping platform, in the dimly
lighted inner apartments, there to await the ordeal known to Malay
cruelty as _sanding_. The ceremony that bears this name, is the one at
which the bride and bridegroom are brought together for the first time.
They are officially supposed never to have seen one another before,
though no Malay who respects himself ever allows his _fiancée_ to be
finally selected, until he has crept under her house, in the night time,
and watched her through the bamboo flooring, or through the chinks in
the wattled walls. They are led forth by their respective relations, and
placed side by side upon a dais, prepared for the purpose, where they
remain seated for hours, while the guests eat a feast in their presence,
and thereafter chant verses from the _Kurân_. During this ordeal they
must sit motionless, no matter how their cramped legs may ache and
throb, and their eyes must remain downcast, and fixed upon their hands,
which, scarlet with henna, lie motionless one on each knee. Malays, who
have experienced this, tell me that it is very trying, and I can well
believe it, the more so, since it is a point of honour for the man to
try to catch an occasional glimpse of his _fiancée_ out of the corner of
his eyes, without turning his head a hair's breadth, and without
appearing to move an eyelash. The bridegroom is conducted to the house
of his bride, there to sit in state, by a band of his relations and
friends, some of whom sing shrill verses from the _Kurân_, while others
rush madly ahead, charging, retreating, capering, dancing, yelling, and
hooting, brandishing naked weapons, and engaging in a most realistic
sham fight, with the bride's relations and friends, who rush out of her
compound to meet them, and do not suffer themselves to be routed until
they have made a fine show of resistance. This custom, doubtless, has
its origin in the fact that, in primitive states of society, a man must
seek a wife at his risk and peril, for among the _Sâkai_ in some of the
wilder parts of the country, the girl is still placed upon an anthill,
and ringed about by her relations, who do not suffer her _fiancé_ to win
her until his head has been broken in several places. The same _feeling_
exists in Europe, as is witnessed by the antagonism displayed by the
school-boy, and even the older and more sensible males of a family, to
their would-be brother-in-law. It is the natural instinct of the man, to
protect his women-folk from all comers, breaking out, as natural
instincts are wont to do, in a hopelessly wrong place.
As I have said, the bride had been left in the inner apartments, there
to await her call to the dais; and the preparations for the feast were
in full swing, and the men were enjoying themselves in their own way
while the women cooked, when, suddenly, a dull thud, as of some falling
body, was heard within the house. The women rushed in, and found the
little bride lying on the floor, with all the pretty garments, with
which she had been bedecked, drenched in her own blood. A small clasp
knife lay by her side, and there was a ghastly gash in her throat. The
women lifted her up, and strove to staunch the bleeding, and as they
fought to stay the life that was ebbing from her, the drone of the
priests, and the beat of the drums, came to their ears from the men who
were making merry without. Then suddenly the news of what had occurred
spread among the guests, and the music died away, and was replaced by a
babble of excited voices, all speaking at once.
The father of the girl rushed in, and, as she lay on the sleeping
platform, still conscious, he asked her who had done this thing.
'It is my own handiwork,' she said.
'But wherefore, child of mine,' cried her mother, 'but wherefore dost
thou desire to slay thyself?'
'I gazed upon my likeness in the mirror,' said the girl, speaking slowly
and with difficulty, 'and I beheld that I was very hideous to look upon,
so that it was not fitting that I should live. Therefore I did it.'
And until she died, about an hour later, this, and this only, was the
explanation which she would give. The matter was related to me by the
great up-country Chief, the Dâto’ Mahrâja Perba, who said that he had
never heard of any parallel case. I jestingly told him that he should
be careful not to allow this deed to become a precedent, for there are
many ugly women in his district, and if they all followed this girl's
example, the population would soon have dwindled sadly. Later, when I
learned the real reasons which led to this suicide, I was sorry that I
had ever jested about it, for the girl's was a sad little story.
Some months before, a Pekan born Malay had come to the Jelai on a
trading expedition, and had cast his eyes upon the girl. To her, he was
all that the people of the surrounding villages were not. He walked with
a swagger, wore his weapons and his clothes with an air that none but a
Court-bred Malay knows how to assume, and was full of brave tales, which
the elders of the village could only listen to with wonder and respect.
As the brilliant form of Lancelot burst upon the startled sight of the
Lady of Shalott, so did this man--an equally splendid vision in the eyes
of this poor little up-country maid--come into her life, bringing with
him hopes and desires, that she had never before dreamed of. Before so
brave a wooer what could her little arts avail? As many better and worse
women than she have done before her, she gave herself to him, thinking,
thereby, to hold him in silken bonds, through which he might not break;
but what was all her life to her, was merely a passing incident to him,
and one day she learned that he had returned down stream. The idea of
following him probably never even occurred to her, but, like others
before her, she thought that the sun had fallen from heaven, because her
night light had gone out. Her parents, who knew nothing of this
intrigue, calmly set about making the arrangements for her marriage, a
matter in which, of course, she would be the last person to be
consulted. She must have watched these preparations with speechless
agony, knowing that the day fixed for the marriage must be that on which
her life would end, for she must long have resolved to die faithful to
her false lover, though it was not until the very last moment that she
summoned up sufficient courage to take her own life. That she ever did
so is very marvellous. That act is one which is not only contrary to all
natural instincts, but is, moreover, utterly opposed to the ideas which
prevail among people of her race; and her sufferings must, indeed, have
been intense, before this means of escape can have presented itself to
her, even as a possibility. She must have been at once a girl of
extraordinary strength and weakness: strength to have made the resolve,
and, having made it, to fearlessly carry it into execution, dying with a
lie on her lips, which should conceal her real reasons, and the fact of
her rapidly approaching maternity; and weakness in that the burden laid
upon her was greater than she could bear. Poor child, ignorant, yet
filled with a terrible knowledge, false, yet faithful even unto death,
strong in her weakness, with a marvellous strength, yet weak in her
first fall.
She has lived her life, and that which she has done,
May God within Himself make whole.
AMONG THE FISHER FOLK
A palm-leaf sail that stretches wide,
A sea that's running strong,
A boat that dips its laving side,
The forefoot's rippling song.
A flaming sky, a crimson flood,
Here's joy for body and mind,
As in our canting crafts we scud
With a spanking breeze behind.
_The Song of the Fisher Folk._
This is a land of a thousand beauties. Nature, as we see her in the
material things which delight our eyes, is straight from the hand of
God, unmarred by man's deforming, a marvellous creation of green growths
and brilliant shades of colour, fresh, sweet, pure, an endless panorama
of loveliness. But it is not only the material things which form the
chief beauties of the land in which we dwell. The ever-varying lights of
the Peninsula, and the splendid Malayan sky that arches over us are, in
themselves, at once the crown of our glory, and the imparters of a fresh
and changeful loveliness to the splendours of the earth. Our eyes are
ever glutted with the wonders of the sky, and of the lights which are
shed around us. From the moment when the dawn begins to paint its orange
tints in the dim East, and later floods the vastness of the low-lying
clouds with glorious dyes of purple and vermillion, and a hundred shades
of colour, for which we have no name, reaching to the very summit of the
heavens; on through the early morning hours, when the slanting rays of
the sun throw long broad streaks of dazzlingly white light upon the
waters of sea and river; on through the burning noonday, when the
shadows fall black and sharp and circular, in dwarfed patches about our
feet; on through the cooler hours of the afternoon, when the sun is a
burning disc low down in the western sky, or, hiding behind a bank of
clouds, throws wide-stretched arms of prismatic colour high up into the
heavens; on through the hour of sunset, when all the world is a flaming
blaze of gold and crimson; and so into the cool still night, when the
moon floods us with a sea of light only one degree less dazzling than
that of day, or when the thousand wonders of the southern stars gaze
fixedly upon us from their places in the deep clear vault above our
heads, and Venus casts a shadow on the grass; from dawn to dewy eve,
from dewy eve to dawn, the lights of the Peninsula vary as we watch them
steep us and all the world in glory, and half intoxicate us with their
beauty.
But the sea is the best point or vantage from which to watch the glories
of which I tell--speaking as I do in weak colourless words of sights and
scenes which no human brush could ever hope to render, nor mortal poet
dream of painting in immortal song--and if you would see them for
yourself, and drink in their beauty to the full, go dwell among the
Fisher Folk of the East Coast.
They are a rough, hard-bit gang, ignorant and superstitious beyond
belief, tanned to the colour of mahogany by exposure to the sun, with
faces scarred and lined by rough weather and hard winds. They are plucky
and reckless, as befits men who go down to the sea in ships; they are
full of resource, the results of long experience of danger, and constant
practice in sudden emergencies, where a loss of presence of mind means a
forfeiture of life. Their ways and all their dealings are bound fast by
a hundred immutable customs, handed down through countless ages, which
no man among them dreams of violating; and they have, moreover, that
measure of romance attaching to them which clings to all men who run
great risks, and habitually carry their lives in their hands.
From the beginning of November to the end of February the North-East
monsoon whips down the long expanse of the China Sea, fenced as it is by
the Philippines and Borneo on the one hand, and by Cochin China and
Cambodia on the other, until it breaks in all its force and fury on the
East Coast of the Peninsula. It raises breakers mountain high upon the
bars at the river mouths, it dashes huge waves against the shore, or
banks up the flooded streams as they flow seaward, until, on a calm day,
a man may drink sweet water a mile out at sea. During this season the
people of the coast are mostly idle, though they risk their lives and
their boats upon the fishing banks on days when a treacherous calm lures
them seaward, and they can rarely be induced to own that the monsoon has
in truth broken, until the beaches have been strewn with driftwood from
a dozen wrecks. They long for the open main when they are not upon it,
and I have seen a party of Kelantan fishermen half drunk with joy at
finding themselves dancing through a stormy sea in an unseaworthy craft
on a dirty night, after a long period spent on the firm shore. 'It is
indeed sweet,' they kept exclaiming--'it is indeed sweet thus once more
to play with the waves!' For here as elsewhere the sea has its own
peculiar strange fascination for those who are at once its masters, its
slaves, and its prey.
When they have at last been fairly beaten by the monsoon, the fisher
folk betake themselves to the scattered coast villages, which serve to
break the monotonous line of jungle and shivering _casuarina_ trees that
fringe the sandy beach and the rocky headlands of the shore. Here under
the cocoa-nut palms, amid chips from boats that are being repaired, and
others that still lie upon the stocks, surrounded by nets, and sails,
and masts, and empty crafts lying high and dry upon the beach out of
reach of the tide, the fishermen spend the months of their captivity.
Their women live here all the year round, labouring incessantly in
drying and salting the fish which have been taken by the men, or
pounding prawns into _blâchan_, that evil-smelling condiment which has
been so ludicrously misnamed the Malayan Caviare. It needs all the
violence of the fresh, strong, monsoon winds to even partially purge
these villages of the rank odours which cling to them at the end of the
fishing season; and when all has been done, the saltness of the sea air,
the brackish water of the wells, and the faint stale smells emitted by
the nets and fishing tackle still tell unmistakable tales of the one
trade in which every member of these communities is more or less
engaged.
The winds blow strong, and the rain falls heavily. The frogs in the
marshes behind the village fill the night air with the croakings of a
thousand mouths, and the little bull-frogs sound their deep see-saw note
during all the hours of darkness. The sun is often hidden by the heavy
cloud-banks, and a subdued melancholy falls upon the moist and steaming
land. The people, whom the monsoon has robbed of their occupation,
lounge away the hours, building boats, and mending nets casually and
without haste or concentrated effort. Four months must elapse before
they can again put to sea, so there is no cause for hurry. They are
frankly bored by the life they have to lead between fishing season and
fishing season, but they are a healthy-minded and withal a law-abiding
people, who do little evil even when their hands are idle.
Then the monsoon breaks, and they put out to sea once more, stretching
to their paddles, and shouting in chorus as they dance across the waves
to the fishing grounds. During this season numerous ugly and uncleanly
steamboats tramp up the coast, calling at all the principal ports for
the cargoes of dried fish that find a ready market in Singapore, and
thus the fisher folk have no difficulty in disposing of their takes.
Prices do not rank high, for a hundredweight of fish is sold on the East
Coast for about six shillings and sixpence of our money, but the profits
of a season are more than sufficient to keep a fisherman and his family
in decency during the months of his inactivity. The shares which are
apportioned to the working hands in each crew, and to the owners of the
crafts and nets, are all determined by ancient custom. The unwritten law
is clearly recognised and understood by all concerned, and thus the
constant disputes which would otherwise inevitably arise are avoided.
Custom--_Aädat_--is the fetish of the Malay. Before it even the _Hukum
Sharä_, the Divine Law of the Prophet, is powerless, in spite of the
professed Muhammadanism of the people. 'Let our children die rather than
our customs,' says the vernacular proverb, and for once an old saw
echoes the sentiment of a race.
The average monthly earnings of a fisherman is about sixteen shillings
($8), and though to our ideas this sounds but a poor return for all the
toil and hardship he must endure, and the many risks and dangers which
surround his avocation, to a simple people it is all-sufficient.
A fisherman can live in comfort on some three shillings a month, and
wife and little ones can, therefore, be supported, and money saved
against the close season, if a man be prudent. The owners of boats and
nets receive far larger sums, but none the less they generally take an
active part in the fishing operations. From one end of the coast to the
other, the capitalist who owns many crafts, and lives upon the income
derived from their hire, is almost unknown.
The fish crowd the shallow shoal waters, and move up and down the coast,
during the whole of the open season, in great schools acres in extent.
Occasionally their passage may be marked from afar by the flight of
hungry sea-fowl hovering and flittering above them; the white plumage of
the restless birds glints and flashes in the sunlight as they wheel and
dip and plunge downwards, or soar upwards again with their prey. I have
seen a school of fish beating the surface of the quiet sea into a
thousand glistening splashes, as in vain they attempted to escape their
restless pursuers, who, floating through the air above them, or plunging
madly down, belaboured the water with their wings, and kept up a
deafening chorus of gleeful screamings.
These seas carry almost everything that the salt ocean waters can
produce. Just as the forests of the Peninsula teem with a life that is
strangely prodigal in its profusion, and in the infinite variety of its
forms, so do the waters of the China sea defy the naturalist to classify
the myriad wonders of their denizens. The shores are strewn with shells
of all shapes and sizes, which display every delicate shade of prismatic
colour, every marvel of dainty tracery, every beauty of curve and spiral
that the mind of man can conceive. The hard sand which the tide has left
is pitted with tiny holes, the lairs of a million crabs and sea insects.
The beaches are covered with a wondrous diversity of animal and
vegetable growths thrown up and discarded by the tide. Seaweed of
strange varieties, and of every fantastic shape and texture, the round
balls of fibrous grass, like gigantic thistledowns, which scurry before
the light breeze, as though endued with life, the white oval shells of
the cuttle-fish, and the shapeless hideous masses of dead _medusæ_, all
lie about in extricable confusion on the sandy shores of the East Coast.