MALAY FOLKLORE. 239 



the private ground referred to. Beyond strewing clean shells on 

 these private beds, no provision is made to collect the swimming 

 embryos during the spa^vning season, and multitudes must be car- 

 ried away and lost. The writer has urged upon the oystermen the 

 need of collectors of brush or tile, by the use of which the oysters 

 which they have acquired may be largely increased in numbers, and 

 will endeavor to demonstrate, by the use of tile collectors, that 

 hundreds of young spat may be saved and raised to marketable age. 

 Our native oyster structurally and physiologically resembles the 

 European oyster (Ostrea edulis), and, like it, could be propagated 

 in artificial oyster ponds. The practicability of such work on the 

 West American coast depends, of course, on the market price of 

 the resulting product as compared with the outlay required for 

 labor. 



MALAY FOLKLOKE. 



By E. CLYDE FORD. 



THE Malay is an Oriental, and, of course, possesses a goodly 

 number of superstitions and old wives' fables, but he does 

 not hug them to his soul like some of the other peoples of the 

 East — the Chinaman, for instance, who lives only by favor of 

 gods, ghosts, goblins, and devils. The Malay lives in spite of 

 spirits, good or bad, and tries to be a model Mohammedan at the 

 same time. With bold assurance and positiveness, he puts his trust 

 in Allah; but, after all, this does not keep him from cherishing, 

 on the sly, a knowledge of a few uncanny, hair-raising beliefs 

 any more than to be a devout churchman with us removes one 

 from the occult inlluences of stolen dishcloths, overturned salt- 

 cellars, and the phases of the moon. 



The Malay man's aherglauhe — his superstition — is undoubtedly 

 of ancient origin. For five hundred years or more he has said 

 his prayers five times a day in response to the muezzin's cry of 

 Allah ho akhav, and his religion has penetrated the very life of his 

 race and spread to the most distant confines of the archipelago, 

 but it has never been able to remove entirely the heritage of that 

 past when he was governed by Sanskrit gods or by deities of his 

 own. Whatever he may have believed then and since changed, 

 these fragments and relics of gobliutlom and superstition go back 

 to that time, and so link on to all the weird love that prevailed 

 in the ancient world. Anotlier evidence of the primitiveness of 

 Malay folklore may be seen in the fact that the inhabitants of 

 the jungles and padangs and the aboriginal dwellers of mountains 



