Page 54 - Malay sketches

VI
AMOK

There comes a time
When the insatiate brute within the
man,
Weary with wallowing in the mire,
leaps forth
Devouring .... and the soul sinks
And leaves the man a devil
LEWIS MORRIS
has been made of the Malay amok,
MENTION as for
and, what, with our happy faculty
mispronunciation and misspelling of the words of
other languages, is called "running amuck," is with
many English people their only idea of the Malay,
and that a very vague one, it may be of interest to
briefly describe this form of homicidal mania.
Mtng-dmok is to make a sudden, murderous
and to the of
attack, though it is applied onslaught
a body of men in war time, or where plunder is the
object and murder the means to arrive at it, the
term is more commonly used to describe the action
of an individual who, suddenly and without apparent
cause, seizes a weapon and strikes out blindly, kill-
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