Page 168 - Malay sketches

MALAY SKETCHES

the floor. There must have been between one and
two hundred present, and I noticed that there were
about numbers of men and women, and all the
equal
principal Malays of the neighbourhood were there.
divided the centre room
The curtains which usually
were up, but on one side there was evidently a bed,
screened by patchwork hangings, and there I con-
cluded His Highness lay.
It was plain from the preparations that, despairing
of effecting a cure by native medicines administered
by native doctors, it was intended to try a little
witchcraft and have a performance of what is called
Ber-hantu. That seemed to me to fall in very well
with the tunggul merah and the banshee, and I was
therefore quite prepared for the raising of the Devil
or any other uncanny manifestation.
I may as well say here that hantu is a ghost,
devil or spirit, and ber-hantu means to devil, to raise
the devil, or, at any rate, to engage in something as
akin to a witches' revel on the Brocken as
nearly
Malay traditions and surroundings will permit. It
is a treatment commonly resorted to in Perak when
other remedies fail. When, however, the friends of
the patient decide that the time has arrived for ber-
hantu, nothing will satisfy them but to have it, and
if the sick man or woman dies during the perform-
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