Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/55

 were kidnapped in hundreds up to a few years ago, and are still surreptitiously purchased in smaller numbers.

It is worthy of note that the story current in Acheh as to the origin of the Niasese resembles that which prevails among the Javanese as to the Kalangs. The same story in a modified form is popular in Bantén, but in the absence of Kalangs it is there applied to the Dutch.

A princess who suffered from a horrible skin-disease was for this cause banished to Niëh. (Achehnese pronunciation of Nias), with only a dog to bear her company. On that island she found many peundang plants, and gradually became acquainted with the curative properties of the peundang root.

It is not clearly stated what the circumstances were which induced her to marry her dog ; but we are informed that from this wedlock a son was born. When he grew up he wished to marry; but Nias was uninhabited. His mother gave him a ring to guide him in his search for a bride; the first woman he met whom the ring fitted was to be his destined wife.

He wandered throughout the whole island without meeting a single woman; finally he found his mother again and the ring fitted her! So they wedded and from this incestuous union is descended the whole population of Nias.

In this legend typifying the vileness of the origin of the Niasese there is wanting one feature which characterizes the Javanese myth of the Kalangs. Both have in common the dog and the incestuous marriage, but the Kalangs have in addition to this as their ancestress the most unclean of all animals, the swine. The princess who lived in the wilderness is in the Kalang legend the offspring of a wild sow, which became her mother in a miraculous manner.