Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/458

438 restrictions, or taboos. One of these reminds us of our own superstition that a child must be carried upstairs before it is carried down. The Kenyah houses are built on piles and reached by a rude ladder; and a child must not be carried down the ladder to the ground until it has received a name. The naming is the formal admission of a babe to the kindred. If it die before the rite, there is no mourning for it. The rite is one of baptism; performed by a Dayong, who pours water over the baby's head, and says: "Be thy name so-and-so!" It is preceded by a number of sacrifices and other formalities, one of the most curious of which is that of procuring new fire by means of the sacred fire-saw.

The subject of taboo has a chapter to itself, and is besides copiously illustrated in treating of other matters. Personal adornments are discussed in a very interesting chapter, the value of which is much enhanced by the beautiful plates. The ear is distorted by piercing and prolonging the lobe, and among men by puncturing the shell to admit of the insertion of a tiger-cat's tooth. The eyebrows and eyelashes are pulled out. The teeth are blackened and pierced for the insertion of brass pins. Tattooing is practised. The patterns are elaborate and often of great beauty, but the suffering and risk incurred in producing them must be equally great. Yet ladies who had undergone the operation with fortitude looked in horror and amazement on pictures of European belles deformed with wasp-waists. They wondered, not merely at the ugliness but the pain at the cost of which the deformity must have been obtained.

Such are a few of the subjects with which Dr. Furness is concerned in this delightful book. It is written in a lively and humorous style, with much literary power, and is calculated to appeal to a wide circle of readers beyond professed anthropologists. The photographic illustrations are of great beauty, and also of permanent value as representations of scenes and objects which in a few years' time will either have perished or have been profoundly modified by the influence of British rule.