Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/165

Rh Polong (or Bajang) and its plaything or messenger the Pelesit, the latter of which occasionally appears to be actually regarded in some cases as the Polong's embodiment, although it is more usually considered as distinct from the Polong. During the Cambridge Expedition of 1899 we came more than once on the track of these peculiar demons. At a village near Trengganu I succeeded, by some strategy, in obtaining a snapshot of a woman who kept a familiar spirit, but most probably she guessed that something was up, for next morning my Malay friend who had helped to arrange the matter came and told me she had just been to see him, and had complained that she had dreamed that a great white magician from over the sea had stolen away her soul. I sent her a present of a little gold dust which I had recently purchased, but even then she was only pacified with difficulty, as she complained that I had not sent her quite enough of it.

It is interesting to note the symptoms displayed by the supposed victims of the demons I have just been describing. In various Malay accounts we are told that a person possessed by a Polong, whether a virgin or a married woman, either falls into a death-like swoon, or cries out and loses consciousness of what he (or she) is doing, and tears and throws off his or her clothing, biting and striking bystanders, and blind and deaf to everything. A certain sign that one of these fits is coming on is for the sick person to rave about cats. When the Polong has been exorcised, the sick person at once recovers consciousness, but is left weak and feeble; but if the means adopted for exorcising it are unsuccessful, the person who is attacked yells and shrieks in anger, and after a day or two dies. After death blood comes bubbling forth from the mouth, and the whole body is blue with bruises.

At a place on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula I came across a different belief, viz., that in a particular species of vampire. At Patani, one of the members of the