Louisa May Alcott - "On Picket Duty and Other Tales"

Anthony Trollope - "La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries"

Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc) - "Jacqueline, v1"

Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe - "The American Woman's Home"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

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PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Pagan Tribes of Borneo

C >> Charles Hose and William McDougall >> The Pagan Tribes of Borneo




The elaborate operations on the BADI FARM that we have described might
seem to a materialist to be sufficient to secure a good harvest;
but this is not the view taken by the Kayans, or any other of the
cultivators of Borneo. In their opinion all these material labours
would be of little avail if not supplemented at every stage by the
minute observance of a variety of rites. The PADI has life or soul,
or vitality, and is subject to sickness and to many vaguely conceived
influences, both good and bad.


Determination of the Seasons

The determination of the time for sowing the seed is a matter of so
great importance that in each village this duty is entrusted to a man
who makes it his profession to observe the signs of the seasons. This
work is so exacting that he is not expected to cultivate a crop of
PADI for himself and family, but is furnished with all the PADI he
needs by contributions from all the other members of the village.

It is essential to determine the approach of the short dry season, in
order that in the course of it the timber may be felled and burned. In
Borneo, lying as it does upon the equator, the revolution of the
year is marked by no very striking changes of weather, temperature,
or of vegetation. In fact, the only constant and striking evidences
of the passage of the months are the alternations of the north-east
and the south-west monsoons. The former blows from October to March,
the latter from April to September, the transitions being marked by
variable winds. The relatively dry season sets in with the south-west
monsoon, and lasts about two months; but in some years the rainfall
during this season is hardly less abundant than during the rest of
the year.

The "clerk of the weather" (he has no official title, though the
great importance of his function secures him general respect) has
no knowledge of the number of days in the year, and does not count
their passage. He is aware that the lunar month has twenty-eight
days, but he knows that the dry season does not recur after any
given number of completed months, and therefore keeps no record of
the lunar months. He relies almost entirely upon observation of the
slight changes of the sun's altitude. His observations are made by
the help of an instrument closely resembling the ancient Greek gnomon,
known as TUKAR DO or ASO DO (Pl. 60).

A straight cylindrical pole of hardwood is fixed vertically in the
ground; it is carefully adjusted with the aid of plumb lines, and
the possibility of its sinking deeper into the earth is prevented by
passing its lower end through a hole in a board laid horizontally on
the ground, its surface flush with the surface of the ground which
is carefully smoothed. The pole is provided with a shoulder which
rests upon this board. The upper end of the pole is generally carved
in the form of a human figure. The carving may be very elaborate,
or the figure may be indicated only by a few notches. The length of
the pole from the collar to its upper extremity is made equal to
the span from tip to tip of outstretched arms of its maker, plus
the length of his span from tip of the thumb to that of the first
finger. This pole (ASO DO) stands on a cleared space before or behind
the house, and is surrounded by a strong fence; the area within the
fence, some three or four yards in diameter, being made as level and
smooth as possible. The clerk of the weather has a neatly worked flat
stick, on which lengths are marked off by notches; these lengths are
measured by laying the stick along the radial side of the left arm,
the butt end against the anterior fold of the armpit. A notch is
then cut at each of the following positions: one notch about one
inch from the butt end, a second opposite the middle of the upper
arm, one opposite the elbow, one opposite the bend of the wrist,
one at the first interphalangeal joint, one at the finger-tip. The
other side of the rod bears a larger number of notches, of which the
most distal marks the greatest length of the mid-day shadow, the next
one the length of the mid-day shadow three days after it has begun
to shorten, the next the length of the shadow after three more days'
shortening, and so on. The mid-day shadow is, of course, the minimal
length reached in the course of the day, and the marks denoting the
changes in length of the shadow are arrived at, purely empirically,
by marking off the length of the mid-day shadow every three days.

The clerk of the weather measures the shadow of the pole at mid-day
whenever the sun is unclouded. As the shadow grows shorter after
reaching its maximal length, he observes it with special care, and
announces to the village that the time for preparing the land is near
at hand. When the shadow reaches the notch made opposite the middle
of the arm, the best time for sowing the grain is considered to have
arrived; the land is therefore cleared, and made ready before this time
arrives. Sowing at times when the shadow reaches other notches is held
to involve various disadvantages, such as liability to more than the
usual number of pests -- monkeys, insects, rats, or sparrows. In the
case of each successful harvest, the date of the sowing is recorded
by driving a peg of ironwood into the ground at the point denoting
the length of the mid-day shadow at that date. The weather prophet
has other marks and notches whose meaning is known only to himself;
his procedures are surrounded with mystery and kept something of
a secret, even from the chief as well as from all the rest of the
village, and his advice is always followed.

The method of observing the sun described above is universal among the
Kenyahs, but some of the Kayans practise a different method. A hole is
made in the roof of the weather-prophet's chamber in the long-house,
and the altitude of the mid-day sun and its direction, north or south
of the meridian, are observed by measuring along a plank fixed on
the floor the distance of the patch of sunlight (falling through the
hole on to the plank) from the point vertically below the hole. The
horizontal position of the plank is secured by placing upon it smooth
spherical stones and noting any inclination to roll. The sunbeam which
enters this hole is called KLEPUT TOH (=the blow-pipe of the spirit).

Some of the Klemantans practise a third method to determine when
the time for sowing is at hand, using a bamboo some feet in length
which bears a mark at a level which is empirically determined. The
bamboo is filled with water while in the vertical position. It is
then tilted till it points towards a certain star, when of course
some water escapes. After it has been restored to the vertical, the
level of the surface of the remaining water is noted. The coincidence
of this level with the mark mentioned above indicates that the time
for sowing is come.

The Sea Dayaks are guided by the observation of the position of
the Pleiades.

The appropriate season having been determined, it is necessary to
secure good omens before the preparation of the land can be begun. A
pig and a fowl having been sacrificed in the usual way, and their
blood sprinkled upon the wooden figures before the house,[46] two
men are sent out in a boat, and where they first see a spider-hunter
they land on the bank and go through the customary procedures. The
calls and appearances of various birds and of the MUNTJAC are of chief
importance. Some of these are good, some bad in various degrees. When
a preponderance of favourable omens has been observed, the men return
to the house to announce their success. They will wait two whole days
if necessary to secure a favourable result. During their absence
a strict MALAN or LALI (tabu) lies upon the house; no stranger may
enter it, and the people sit quietly in the house performing only
the most necessary tasks. The announcement of the nature of the omens
observed is made to the chief in the presence of a deeply interested
throng of both sexes. If the omens observed are considered to be bad,
or of doubtful import, the men go out for a second period; but if they
are favourable, the women of each room perform the private rites over
their stores of seed PADI, which are kept in their rooms. After the
pros and cons have been fully discussed, the chief names the day for
the beginning of the clearing operations.

At the beginning of the sowing the house is again subject to MALAN for
one day. During the growth of the PADI various charms and superstitious
practices are brought into use to promote its growth and health,
and to keep the pests from it. The PADI charms are a miscellaneous
collection or bundle of small articles, such as curious pebbles and
bits of wood, pigs' tusks of unusual size or shape, beads, feathers,
crystals of quartz. Kayans as a rule object to pebbles and stones
as charms. Such charms are generally acquired in the first instance
through indications afforded by dreams, and are handed down from
mother to daughter. Such charms contained in a basket are usually
kept in a PADI barn, from which they are taken to the field by the
woman and waved over it, usually with a live fowl in the hand, while
she addresses the PADI seed in some such terms as the following:
"May you have a good stem and a good top, let all parts of you grow
in harmony, etc. etc." Then she rapidly repeats a long customary
formula of exhortation to the pests, saying, "O rats, run away down
river, don't trouble us; O sparrows and noxious insects, go feed on
the PADI of the people down river." If the pests are very persistent,
the woman may kill a fowl and scatter its blood over the growing PADI,
while she charges the pests to disappear, and calls upon LAKI IVONG
(the god of harvests) to drive them out.

Women alone will gather the first ears of the crop. If they encounter
on their way to the fields any one of the following creatures,
they must at once return home, and stay there a day and a night, on
pain of illness or early death: certain snakes, spiders, centipedes,
millipedes, and birds of two species, JERUIT and BUBUT (a cuckoo). Or
again, if the shoulder straps of their large baskets should break
on the way, if a stump should fall against them, or the note of the
spider-hunter be heard, or if a woman strikes her foot by accident
against any object, the party must return as before.

It will be clear from the foregoing account that the women play the
principal part in the rites and actual operations of the PADI culture;
the men only being called in to clear the ground and to assist in
some of the later stages. The women select and keep the seed grain,
and they are the repositories of most of the lore connected with
it. It seems to be felt that they have a natural affinity to the
fruitful grain, which they speak of as becoming pregnant. Women
sometimes sleep out in the PADI fields while the crop is growing,
probably for the purpose of increasing their own fertility or that
of the PADI; but they are very reticent on this matter.


The Harvest Festival

When the crop is all gathered in, the house is MALAN to all outsiders
for some ten days, during which the grain is transported from the
fields to the village and stored in the PADI barns. When this process
is completed or well advanced, the festival begins with the preparation
of the seed grain for the following season. Some of the best of the
new grain is carefully selected by the women of each room, enough for
the sowing of the next season. This is mixed with a small quantity
of the seed grain of the foregoing seasons which has been carefully
preserved for this purpose in a special basket. The basket contains
grains of PADI from good harvests of many previous years. This is
supposed to have been done from the earliest time of PADI planting,
so that the basket contains some of the original stock of seed, or
at least the virtue of it leavening the whole. This basket is never
emptied, but a pinch of the old PADI is mixed in with the new, and
then a handful of the mixture added to the old stock. The idea here
seems to be that the old grain, preserving continuity generation after
generation with the original seed PADI of mythical origin,[47] ensures
the presence in the grain of the soul or spirit or vital principle of
PADI. While mixing the old with the new seed grain, the woman calls
on the soul of the PADI to cause the seed to be fruitful and to grow
vigorously, and to favour her own fertility. For the whole festival
is a celebration or cult of the principle of fertility and vitality --
that of the women no less than that of the PADI.[48]

The women who have been delivered of children during the past year
will make a number of toys, consisting of plaited work, in the shapes
of various animals filled with boiled rice (Fig. 16). These they
throw to the children of the house, who scramble for them in the
gallery. This seems to be of the nature of a thank-offering.

At this time also another curious custom is observed. Four water
beetles, of the kind that skates on the surface of the still water, are
caught on the river and placed on water in a large gong. Some old man
specially wise in this matter watches the beetles, calling to them to
direct their movements. The people crowd round deeply interested, while
the old man interprets the movements of the beetles as forecasting
good or ill luck with the crops of the following season, and invokes
the good-will of Laki Ivong. Laki Ivong is asked to bring the soul
of the PADI to their homes. Juice from a sugarcane is poured upon the
water, and the women drink the water, while the beetles are carefully
returned to the river. The beetles carry the messages to Laki Ivong.

When these observances have been duly honoured, there begins a
scene of boisterous fun. The women make pads of the boiled sticky
new rice, and cover it with soot from their cooking vessels. With
these they approach the men and dab the pads upon their faces and
bodies, leaving sooty marks that are not easily removed. The men
thus challenged give chase, and attempt to get possession of the rice
pads and to return the polite attention. For a short space of time a
certain license prevails among the young people; and irregularities,
even on the part of married people, which would be gravely reprobated
at all other times, are looked upon very much less seriously. It is,
in fact, the annual carnival. Each roomhold has prepared a stock of
BURAK from the new rice, and this now circulates freely among both men
and women, and large meals of rice and pork are usually eaten. All
join in dancing, some of the women dressed like men, some carrying
PADI-pestles; at one moment all form a long line marching up and
down the gallery in step to the strains of the KELURI; some young
men dance in realistic imitation of monkeys (DOK), or hornbills, or
other animals, singly or in couples. Others mimic the peculiarities
of their acquaintances. The women also dance together in a long line,
each resting her hands on the shoulders of the one going before her,
and all keeping time to the music of the KELURIES as they dance up
and down the long gallery. All this is kept up with good humour the
whole day long. In the evening more BURAK is drunk and songs are sung,
the women mingling with the men, instead of remaining in their rooms
as on other festive occasions. Before midnight a good many of the men
are more or less intoxicated, some deeply so; but most are able to
find their way to bed about midnight, and few or none become offensive
or quarrelsome, even though the men indulge in wrestling and rough
horseplay with one another. After an exceptionally good harvest the
boisterous merry-making is renewed on a second or even a third day.

The harvest festival is the time at which dancing is most
practised. The dances fall into two chief classes, namely, solo dances
and those in which many persons take part. Most of the solo dances take
the form of comic imitations of the movements of animals, especially
the big macaque monkey (DOK), the hornbill, and big fish. These dances
.seem to have no connection with magic or religion, but to be purely
aesthetic entertainments. The animals that are regarded with most awe
are never mimicked in this way. There are at least four distinct group
dances popular among the Kayans. Both men and women take part, the
women often dressing themselves as men for the occasion (Pl. 61). The
movements and evolutions are very simple. The LUPA resembles the dance
on return from war described in Chap. X. In the KAYO, a similar dance,
the dancers are led by a woman holding one of the dried heads which is
taken down for the purpose; the women, dressed in war-coats, pretending
to take the head from an enemy. The LAKEKUT Is a musical drill in which
the dancers stamp on the planks of the floor in time to the music. The
LUPAK is a kind of slow polka. In none of these do the dancers fall
into couples. A fifth dance, the dance of the departure of the spirit,
is a dramatic representation by three persons of the death of one of
them, and of his restoration to life by means of the water of life
(this is supposed to be brought from the country which is traversed
on the journey to the land of shades). This dance is sometimes given
with so much dramatic effect as to move the onlookers to tears.



CHAPTER 7

The Daily Life of a Kayan Long House

A little before dawn the cocks roosting beneath the house awaken the
household by their crowing and the flapping of their wings. The pigs
begin to grunt and squeal, and the dogs begin to trot to and fro in
the gallery. Before the first streaks of daylight appear, the women
light the fires in the private rooms or blow up the smouldering embers;
then most of them descend from the house, each carrying in a basket
slung on her back several bamboo water-vessels to be filled from the
river. Many of them bathe at this time in the shallow water beside
the bank, while the toilet of others consists in dashing water over
their faces, washing their mouths with water, and rubbing their teeth
with the forefinger. Returning to the house with their loads of water
(Pl. 63), they boil rice for the household breakfasts and for the
dinner of those who are to spend the day in the PADI field or the
jungle. The boiled rice intended for the latter use is made up in
packets wrapped in green leaves, each containing sufficient for a meal
for one person. About half-past six, when the daylight is fully come,
the pigs expectant of their meal are clamouring loudly for it. The
women descend to them by ladders leading from the private rooms, and
each gives to the pigs of her household the leavings of the meals
of the previous day. About the same time the men begin to bestir
themselves sluggishly; some descend to bathe, while others smoke
the fag ends of the cigarettes that were unfinished when they fell
asleep. Then the men breakfast in their rooms, and not until they are
satisfied do the women and children sit down to their meal. During all
this time the chronically hungry dogs, attracted by the odours of food,
make persistent efforts to get into their owner's rooms. Success in
this manoeuvre is almostly always followed by their sudden and noisy
reappearance in the gallery, caused by a smart blow with a stick. In
the busy farming season parties of men, women, and children will set
off in boats for the PADI fields taking their breakfasts with them.

After breakfast the men disperse to their various tasks. During some
three or four months of the year all able-bodied persons repair
daily to the PADI fields, but during the rest of the year their
employments are more varied. The old women and invalids remain all
day long in the rooms; the old men lounge all day in the gallery,
smoking many home-made cigarettes, and perhaps doing a bit of carving
or other light work and keeping an eye on the children. The young
children play in and out and about the house, chasing the animals,
and dabbling among the boats moored at the bank.

A few of the able-bodied men employ themselves in or about the house,
making boats, forging swords, spear-heads, iron hoes, and axes,
repairing weapons or implements. Others go in small parties to the
jungle to hunt deer and pig, or to gather jungle produce -- fruits,
rubber, rattans, or bamboos -- or spend the day in fishing in the
river. During the months of December and January the jungle fruits --
the durian, rambutan, mangosteen, lansat, mango, and numerous small
sour fruits (Pl. 65) -- are much more abundant than at other times;
and during these months all other work is neglected, while the people
devote themselves to gathering the fruit which forms for a time almost
their only food.

Except during the busy PADI season the work of the women is wholly
within the house. The heaviest part of their household labour is the
preparation of the rice. After breakfast they proceed to spread out
PADI on mats on the open platforms adjoining the gallery. While the
PADI is being dried by the exposure to sun and wind on these platforms,
it must be protected from the domestic fowls by a guardian who, sitting
in the gallery, drives them away by means of a long bamboo slung by
a cord above the platform. Others fill the time between breakfast and
the noonday dinner by bathing themselves and the children in the river,
making and repairing clothing, mats, and baskets, fetching more water,
cleaning the rooms and preparing dinner. This meal consists of boiled
rice with perhaps a piece of fish, pork, or fowl, and, like breakfast
and supper, is eaten in the private rooms.

As soon as dinner is over the pounding of the PADI begins
(Frontispiece, Vol. II.). Each mortar usually consists of a massive
log of timber roughly shaped, and having sunk in its upper surface,
which is a little hollowed, a pit about five inches in diameter and
nine inches in depth. Into this pit about a quarter of a bushel of
PADI is put. Two women stand on the mortar facing one another on
either side of the pit, each holding by the middle a large wooden
pestle. This is a solid bar of hardwood about seven feet long, about
two inches in diameter in the middle third, and some three or four
inches in diameter in the rest of its length. The two ends are rounded
and polished by use. Each woman raises her pestle to the full height
of her reach, and brings it smartly down upon the grain in the pit,
the two women striking alternately with a regular rhythm. As each
one lifts her pestle, she deftly sweeps back into the pit with her
foot the grain scattered by her stroke.

After pounding the PADI for some minutes without interruption,
one woman takes a winnowing pan, a mat made in the shape of an
English housemaid's dustpan, but rather larger than this article,
and receives in it the pounded grain which the other throws out of
the pit with her foot.

Both women then kneel upon a large mat laid beside the mortar; the
one holding the winnowing pan keeps throwing the grain into the air
with a movement which causes the heavier grain to fall to the back of
the pan, while the chaff and dust is thrown forward on to the mat. Her
companion separates the rice dust from the chaff by sifting it through
a sieve. A considerable quantity of the dust or finely broken rice
is formed by the pounding in the mortar, and this is the principal
food given to the pigs. The winnowed grain is usually returned to the
mortar to be put through the whole process a second time. The clean
rice thus prepared is ready for the cooking-pot.

The winnowing and sifting is often done by old women, while the
younger women continue the severer task of plying the pestle. In the
Kayan houses the mortars are in many cases double, that is to say,
there are two pits in the one block of timber, and two pairs of women
work simultaneously. In the middle of the afternoon the whole house
resounds with the vigorous blows of the pestles, for throughout the
length of the gallery two or more women are at work beside each room,
husking the day's supply of rice for each family.

For the women of all the peoples, except the Punans, the husking of
the PADI is a principal feature of the day's work, and is performed
in much the same fashion by all. The Kenyahs alone do their work out
of doors beside the PADI barns, sometimes under rude lean-to shelters.

When this task is completed the women are covered with dust; they
descend again to the river, and bathe themselves and the children
once more. They may gather some of the scanty vegetables grown in
small enclosures near most of the houses, and then proceed to prepare
supper with their rice and whatever food the men may have brought
home from the jungle. For now, about an hour before sundown, the men
return from expeditions in the jungle, often bringing a wild pig, a
monkey, a porcupine, or some jungle fruit, or young shoots of bamboo,
as their contribution to the supper table; others return from fishing
or from the PADI fields, and during the sunset hour at a large village
a constant stream of boats arrives at the landing-place before the
house. Most of the home-comers bathe in the river before ascending
to the house. This evening bath is taken in more leisurely fashion
than the morning dip. A man will strip off his waist-cloth and rush
into the water, falling flat on his chest with a great splash. Then
standing with the water up to his waist he will souse his head and
face, then perhaps swim a few double overhand strokes, his head going
under at each stroke. After rubbing himself down with a smooth pebble,
he returns to the bank, and having resumed his waist-cloth, he squeezes
the water from his hair, picks up his paddle, spear, hat, and other
belongings, and ascends to the gallery. There he hangs up his spear
by jabbing its point into a roof-beam beside the door of his chamber,
and sits down to smoke a cigarette and to relate the events of his
day while supper is preparing. As darkness falls, he goes to his
room to sup. By the time the women also have supped, the tropical
night has fallen, and the house is lit by the fires and by resin
torches, and nowadays by a few kerosene lamps. The men gather round
the fireplaces in the gallery and discuss politics, the events of the
day, the state of the crops and weather, the news obtained by meetings
with the people of neighbouring houses, and relate myths and legends,
folk-tales and animal stories. The women, having put the children
to bed, visit one another's rooms for friendly gossip; and young
men drop in to join their parties, accept the proffered cigarette,
and discourse the sweet music of the KELURI,[49] the noseflute,
and the Jew's harp (Figs. 17, 18, 19). Or Romeo first strikes up
his plaintive tune outside the room in which Juliet sits with the
women folk. Juliet may respond with a few notes of her guitar[50]
(Fig. 20), thus encouraging Romeo to enter and to take his place in
the group beside her, where he joins in the conversation or renews
his musical efforts. About nine o'clock all retire to bed, save a few
old men who sit smoking over the fires far into the night. The dogs,
after some final skirmishes and yelpings, subside among the warm ashes
of the fireplaces; the pigs emit a final squeal and grunt; and within
the house quietness reigns. Now the rushing of the river makes itself
heard in the house, mingled with the chirping of innumerable insects
and the croaking of a myriad frogs borne in from the surrounding
forest. The villagers sleep soundly till cock-crow; but the European
guest, lying in the place of honour almost beneath the row of human
heads which adorns the gallery, is, if unused to sleeping in a Bornean
long house, apt to be wakened from time to time throughout the night
by an outburst of dreadful yelpings from the dogs squabbling for the
best places among the ashes, by the prolonged fit of coughing of an
old man, by an old crone making up the fire, by the goats squealing
and scampering over the boats beneath the house, or by some weird
cry from the depths of the jungle.