MALAY SKETCHES
the floor. There must have been between one and two hundred present, and I noticed that there were about equal numbers of men and women, and all the principal Malays of the neighbourhood were there. The curtains which usually divided the centre room were up, but on one side there was evidently a bed, screened by patchwork hangings, and there I concluded 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 Bĕr-hantu. That seemed to me to fall in very well with the tunggul mérah 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 bĕr-hantu means to devil, to raise the devil, or, at any rate, to engage in something as nearly akin to a witches’ revel on the Brocken as 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 bĕr-hantu, nothing will satisfy them but to have it, and if the sick man or woman dies during the perform-
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