Seventeen years among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo; a ... - Sabrizain.org

OMENS AND DREAMS 157
Other people may eat it, for the omen affects only those
who own the crops.
A way of escaping from the bad effects of omens is
sometimes resorted to. Certain men, who by some
peculiar magic influence are credited with possessing in
themselves some occult power which can overcome bad
omens, are able by eating some little thing of the produce
of the farm to turn away the evil prognostication and
render it ineffectual. Something grown on the farm— a
little Indian corn or a few cucumber-shoots— is taken to
the man. For a small consideration he eats it raw. By
this means he appropriates to himself the evil omen,
which can do him no harm, and thus delivers the owner
of the farm from any possible evil in the future.
The Dyak pays
heed to these ominous creatures not
only in his farming, but in all his journeyings and in any
kind of work he may be engaged in. If he be going to
visit a friend, the cry of a bird of ill omen will send him
back. If he be engaged in carrying beams from the
jungle for his house, and hear a Jcutok, or bejampong, or
an embuas, he will at once throw down the piece of timber,
and it will be left there for a day or two, or perhaps
abandoned altogether. If at night the inhabitants of a
long Dyak house hear an owl make a peculiar noise called
sabut, they will all hastily leave the house in the early
morning, and remain away, living in temporary sheds,
for some weeks, and return to the house only when they
hear a nendak or beragai cry on their left. There are
unfit for habitation—
many omens which make a place
for example, a beragai flying over the house or an arma-
dillo crawling up into it.
So great is the Dyak
belief in omens that a man will
sometimes abandon a nearly finished boat simply because