Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/150

136 tradition), acquire supernatural powers, enabling them to climb trees of immense height and to walk in safety along branches which are no thicker than a man's thumb, a manifest impossibility under normal conditions. A similar power is also claimed for the young girls who perform what the Malays call the Monkey-dance, in which, however, they are possessed by the Monkey-spirit.

The burning of incense and recital of a charm called Pĕruang enables Malay magicians to walk upon water without sinking in it beyond the ankles. A similar charm in the case of the Malay form of ordeal by diving enables the innocent party to remain under water for an incredible period, which, according to the Malays, sometimes extended to "almost" three-quarters of an hour, in fact in some cases (it was declared) he would remain under water until the spectators lost patience and dragged him out, whereas the guilty party begins to choke immediately. A magician from Perak informed me once that he had used the power of causing a sandbank to rise at sea between his own boat and that of his pursuers. I at once made him a sporting offer of twenty dollars if he would give me an exhibition of it, but he informed me that it could only be done when he was really in danger, and not for "swagger." The same man, moreover, claimed to possess the power of clairvoyance, but failed in an easy test which he himself proposed.

The first class of spiritualistic ceremonies, which happens to be the one to which I specially wish to direct your attention to-night, consists of a simple form of automatism, as represented by the movements of inert objects. No form of table-turning is of course practised by the Malays, who pass their lives for the most part in scattered com- munities, either in the jungle or at sea, and who do not therefore make any appreciable use of such luxuries as tables and chairs. Nevertheless a fairly close parallel to our own table-turning exhibitions may be found in the dance-ritual of inanimate objects which the Malay magicians