Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/456

 436 Reviews.

The Home-Life of Borneo Head Hunters, its Festivals AND Folk-Lore. By William Henry Furness, 3*^., M.D., F.R.G.S. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1902.

This beautifully printed and profusely illustrated volume forms an important contribution to our knowledge of the natives of Sarawak. Dr. Furness is not content with superficial impressions, but takes pains to make himself, and his readers, acquainted with the trains of thought underlying the practices he describes. The chapters on Sarawak in Dr. Haddon's Head-Hunters, Black, White, and Broivn (reviewed supra, p. loi), and the volume now before us, supplement one another, and should be read together.

It is natural to turn first to the descriptions of head-hunting and the traditions of its origin. The practice having been abolished, or at least restrained by the Rajah, the author had no opportunity of witnessing an actual head-hunt. He accompanied a war ex- pedition ; but the enemy had retired beyond reach. Inasmuch as it was impossible to think of returning without at least one head, a second-hand head had to be obtained by borrowing. The ceremonies (carefully described) which followed were, therefore, to some extent a make-believe. Yet there is no reason to think they did not accurately represent the originals. Dr. Furness made efforts to ascertain the meaning of the practice of head- hunting, and to follow the train of thought by which, as one of the chiefs told him, " those who were once our enemies become our guardians, our friends, our benefactors." The result does not carry us very far. It is certain that, once a head has been brought home and the appropriate ceremonies have been per- formed, it is regarded as a sacred object, the habitation or embodi- ment of some super-human spirit or spiritual power. A custom still fraught with peril to saintly personages in the East, as once in the West also, is that of securing a divinity by slaying some powerful or holy man. His spirit, abiding with or near the muddy vesture of decay which it has thus put off, becomes the guardian of the place. But Dr. Furness does not make it clear that this is the belief of the Sibops and other head-hunting tribes of Borneo. On the contrary, one of their chiefs told him : " If my head were cut off, my second self would go to Bulun Matai [the fields of the dead] where beyond a doubt I should be happy ; the Dayongs [shamans, priests] tell us, and surely they know,