Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/176

162 The Ruan fish, and the fish called Bujor, The Lembat fish, and the fish Pĕpuyuh, May all these enter the small-waisted Fish-trap. Bear the fish home, throw them down on the hut-floor, And cut them in slices, these fish so many. Stew them and cook them very very carefully And when you have cooked them, call your comrades. And give to eat a little to everyone. And when with fish you have filled your belly, Rise to your feet, O Mamat Solong, And stamp on the long floor of the Balei, Stamp on the broad floor of the Balei, Big sisters and little will watch you gladly. Such is the rite of the small-waisted Fish-trap."

Is it so unwarrantable a conclusion to draw from all that I have said (that is, from the words of the song taken in conjunction with the character of the feast), that we here have a case of what I may perhaps be permitted to call, for want of a better name, stimulative magic, such as might be calculated to increase the effectiveness of the trap as a means of obtaining food?

If this view be taken, we may perhaps say that this form of magic has something in common with what has been called productive magic; in that the object in both cases is to increase the general store of the food of the tribe, which after all is, and must always remain, the chief consideration of these Malayan aborigines. And if so, is it too much to say that we have here a case of survival, and that the Fish-trap performance of the civilised Malays, even though its purpose may now have been forgotten, may well have taken its origin in some such practical attempt at stimulation as that I have here described? It is perhaps an important point that the Malays themselves are actually described by their old writers as indulging in periodical drinking festivals and orgies, not unlike those which are still practised by their pagan fellow-countrymen.

If I have not yet made my position altogether clear, I may say that I regard the feast itself, with the singing and dancing which accompanied it, and the sexual orgy with which it concluded, as the really important part of a probably "pro-