256 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



get the better of the old superstitions, one of which is that the 

 owner of a house always dies within a year of its completion. 

 Longevity is therefore ensured by not completing it, with the 

 curious result that the whole city looks unfinished or dilapidated. 

 In the house where Mrs Colvile stayed, " one window was framed 

 and glazed, the other nailed up with rough boards ; part of the 

 stair-banister had no top-rail ; outside only a portion of the roof 

 had been tiled; and so on throughout 1 ." 



A good deal of fancy is displayed in the oral literature, com- 

 prising histories, or at least legends, fables, songs, riddles, and a 

 great mass of folklore, much of which has already 

 Fo?kiore aSy been rescued from oblivion by the "Malagasy Folk- 

 lore Society." Some of the stories present the 

 usual analogies to others in widely separated lands, stories which 

 seem to be perennial, and to crop up wherever the surface is a 

 little disturbed by investigators. One of those in Mr Dahle's 

 extensive collection, entitled the "History of Andrianarisainabo- 

 niamasoboniamanoro," might be described as a variant of our 

 "Beauty and the Beast." Besides this prince with the long name, 

 called Bonia " for short," there is a princess " Golden Beauty," 

 both being of miraculous birth, but the latter a cripple and 

 deformed, until found and wedded by Bonia. Then she is so 

 transfigured that the "Beast" is captivated and contrives to carry 

 her off. Thereupon follows an extraordinary series of adventures, 

 resulting of course in the rescue of Golden Beauty by Bonia, 

 when everything ends happily, not only for the two lovers, but for 

 all other people whose wives had also been abducted. These are 

 now restored to their husbands by the hero, who vanquishes and 

 slays the monster in a fierce fight, just as in our nursery tales of 

 knights and dragons. 



In the Philippines, where the ethnical confusion is probably 

 greater than in any other part of Malaysia 2 , the 

 pine NatiUs' great bulk of the inhabitants appear to be un- 

 doubtedly of proto- Malayan stock. Except in the 

 southern island of Mindanao, which is still mainly Muhammadan 

 or heathen, most of the settled populations have long been 



1 op. tit. p. 153. 



2 Eth. p. 333. 



