Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

302 NATURAL RELIGION AND FOLK-LORE part in
spirits of inert objects. As regards vegetation spirits,
I have seen a fruit-tree (mangostin) decorated with
palm-leaf festoons which I was told were used in a
ceremony for promoting the fertility of the tree, and
there was also, as among the Malays, a strong
belief in the spirits inhabiting trees yielding gutta
(Hantu Getah), eaglewood (Hantu Gharu), and
camphor (Hantu Kapor), all of which were treated
ceremonially and surrounded with taboos.
The " Orang Bunyan " live in swampy places.
"I" (the speaker) "once met two of them near
the Pelkun in the Siak district (Sumatra). They
wore madder-coloured jackets and flowered skirts of
the kind called ' batek ; beautiful women they were,
'
both of them, with pale skins, open features, and
black hair rolled up on their heads, and trimmed with
a fringe (like that of a bride) over the brows. They
asked me what I was doing, and I said I was ' collect-
ing gutta.' They replied, ' All the gutta here is ours.
If you collect any, give it to us.' At this I turned
back, and when I had gone but two paces, they
vanished. When I got back, my comrades said, * Why
did you abandon all that gutta ? ' Sol
told them of
the two women I had met, and what they said. And
that night my two comrades died without a trace of
sickness. Afterwards I met a gutta-tree magician and
told him my story. So he would try too. He got
as much as two pikuls and sold it, and had just re-
turned to get more when his son-in-law died.
" One of these same '
Gaffer Blue-Heron (Bes. ' Dato'
Orang
Bunyan '
called
Si Puchong') lives at
a Sacred Place near Sungei Kroh (close to Sepang),
and another at a Sacred Place on the way to Labu
(Bes. '
K'ramat
To' Kemarong '). Whenever we pass