Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/416

 374 Collectanea.

When any one is at the mercy of the possessed lad, he breaks the spell by calling out his real name. This offends the hantu of the musangs, by whose assistance his climbing feats have been performed, and who is responsible for his acts as a whole. The spirit therefore leaves him at once, and it is therefore important not to call the boy's name while he is up a tree, lest, being deserted, he should fall and be hurt.

The return to normal consciousness is sometimes preceded by insensibility. The subject remembers nothing afterwards of what has been happening. He is more or less insensible to pain, too, during the trance, as might be expected, though, when it is over, he is much exhausted and often aching and miserable.

Why should the sound of his own name thus strip off the boy's assumed personality? Doubtless we can call it pre-suggestion. He knows all about the game beforehand, and so practically receives a suggestion that the sound of his name is to awake him ; and the awakening follows the signal, as usual.

One might ask, too, why any boy should wiUingly fill a role which seems so unattractive, but there is usually no difficulty on that score. Lads of the type required seem often to like it.

This game is the commonest of a group which includes hantu- kambing (goat), hantu kra (monkey), and hantu kuching (cat). All are played in the same manner, except that different rhymes are used, and the behaviour of the corresponding animal is imitated. A human goat does not climb trees, but he will charge the wall of a house so violently as to break a plank, apparently without feeling pain.

Naturally, these games are often imitated. A boy will pretend to be berhantu in this way when he is quite self-possessed and conscious, and then the amusement is merely a variety of " I spy." But the descriptions given me by many boys who have played it, and in particular such details as the tests used to decide when the possession is complete, make it unmistakably clear that the game as I have described it is a favourite amusement among boys all over the Federated Malay States. It is also sometimes played by men.

Kuala Kangsar. J- O'May.