Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/138

 This passage is calculated to touch the feelings of the truants and recall them to their duties as fathers of families. On the other hand, however, the author does not wish to let his female readers go unadmonished. Many women, he says, embitter the lives of their husbands by demanding more than they can bestow in the matter of clothing and personal adornments. Thus they have themselves to blame if their spouses, weary of domestic strife, go forth to seek happiness in the rantòs.

We now come to the literature of romance. The materials from whence the tales we are now about to describe are drawn are known to all who are versed in Malayan literature. Princes or princesses, the very manner of whose birth transcends the ordinary course of nature, attain to the splendour to which they are predestined, in spite of the obstacles which the envy of men and the cunning of demons set in their path. Heroes, driven by dreams and omens to wander through the world, encounter at every step seemingly invincible monsters, unsolvable enigmas and unapproachable princesses; but they also meet with well-disposed déwas, sages or beasts who enable them to fulfil their heroic part without an effort. Each romance contains sundry love-stories, in which the hero after a brief period of bliss is separated from the objects of his passion, but at the final catastroph beholds his princesses (from one to four in number) and generally their parents as well, all happily united round him while the enemies of his happiness either undergo the punishment they deserve or are spared by his clemency.

The inevitable combats are decided less by the prowess or generalship of the heroes than by their invulnerability, and the secret lore and charms obtained by them from hermits, spirits or giants of the wilds. They call into being, whenever they require them, flourishing towns and glittering palaces from a magic box; in like manner by smiting on the ground or on some part of their own bodies or by the utterance of a magic word they bring to light armies of jéns and men, who fight on their behalf with supernatural weapons.

A large majority of Achehnese romances show unmistakeable traces of the same origin as those of the Malays; indeed a great number ofthem are expressly imitated from Malay models. To decide in any