12/16/2023 0 Comments Wandering minstrels hand of fateIt projects some thirty feet over the flat bank, and then, shelving suddenly away to the ground, forms a stone roof, under which a score of men can camp with ease. It is of enormous size, and is probably deeply embedded in the ground, for large trees have taken root and grow upon its upper surface. The banks are high and shelving, but, on the top, they are flat, and it is here that the gigantic overhanging granite boulder stands, which gives the place its name. It is situated on the banks of the BrÊseh, a little babbling stream which runs down to the Slim. The place is called BÂtu SÂpor-the Stone Lean-to Hut-in the vernacular, and the name is a descriptive one. We were camped for the night at a spot in the jungle on the PÊrak side of the range, in a natural refuge, which has probably sheltered wayfarers in these forests ever since primitive man first set foot in the Peninsula. I first met BÂyan the Paroquet some six months before his death, when I was making my way across the Peninsula, vi the Slim Mountains, in 1887. The story of BÂyan the Paroquet, which I am about to tell, is another rather striking instance of the utter impunity with which the son of a Chief may take life, under the rule of a Native Prince in an Independent Malay State. Death to this Chinaman must have only been one degree less unpleasant than it was to the man whoīeyond the seas Was scraped to death with oyster shells Among the Carrabees. RÂja Haji told me that he botched the killing a good deal, but that he hacked the life out of the Chinaman at last, though the poor wretch, like Charles II., took an unconscionable time adying. The Chinaman had done no evil, but he was selected because he was feeble and decrepit, and would show no fight even if attacked by a small boy with a kris. Some fathers went even further than this, and RÂja Haji Hamid once told me that he killed his first man when he was a child of eleven or twelve, his victim being a very thin, miserable-looking Chinaman, upon whom his father bade him try his 'prentice hand. ![]() Such doings were not regarded altogether with disfavour by the boy's parents,-for, in a rude state of society, a Chief must be feared before he is loved, if his days are to be long in the land,-and some of the older men encouraged their sons to make a kill, much in the same spirit which animated parents in Europe half a century ago, when they put a finishing touch to the education of their children by sending them on the Grand Tour. Young Chiefs were wont to take a life or two from pure galetÉ de coeur, merely to show that they were beginning to feel their feet, and were growing up brave and manly as befitted their descent. Murder was frequently done for the most trivial causes, and a Malay often drew a knife, when an Englishman would have been content to drop a damn. Life-meaning the life which animates the bodies of other people-is not priced high by the natives of the East Coast but eight or nine years ago, it was held even more lightly than it is at present. ![]() Said one among them, 'Surely not in vain My substance from the common Earth was ta'en And to this Figure moulded, to be broke, Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again.'
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