Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/166

152 expedition (Mr. Gwynne-Vaughan) informed me that he was walking down the main street of the town when he was stopped and asked if he wished to see some skulls. He had the presence of mind to reply in the affirmative, and was taken outside the town and there shown two skulls which had been feeding, it was alleged, upon the soul of a Malay woman. I myself then went to see them, and bought the two skulls for a couple of dollars, and brought them home.

Those who are familiar with T. Lockwood Kipling's fine work on Man and Beast in India will doubtless remember the beautiful specimens which he gives of the caligraphic pictures of which oriental penmen are so fond. Pictures of this kind are occasionally employed by Malay magicians for various objects, and form one of the methods adopted for guarding a house against the entry of the familiar spirits which I have been speaking. They consist, as in India, of the names of God and of various prophets, and prayers cleverly woven into a design, which is believed to furnish a complete protection against the spirits referred to.

IV. Of the ceremonies of the fourth class, viz. Possession and Devil-dancing, I have seen, perhaps, altogether about half a dozen performances, though I need scarcely remark that it is a most difficult task for a European to obtain permission to attend such ceremonies at all, and it can only be done by possessing a strong friend (so to speak) at court.

At these performances the magician and a large number of his friends and relations being assembled in the sick man's house, the magician seats himself on the ground facing an attendant who chaunts the invocation, accompanying himself upon the Malay three-stringed viol. After much burning of benzoin and scattering of sacrificial rice the spirit descends, entering the magician's body through the fontanel. The magician is at once seized with convulsive twitchings which seem to spread all over his body, and these are accompanied by a rapid rotatory motion of the