26 Journal of the F.M.S. Museums. [Vol. VII. 



Should anyone in the house, a child at play for instance, 

 break off the tail of a lizard, each person cuts a piece of hair 

 from his. or her, head, burns it in the hie. and then, after 

 collecting the ashes, blows them through the hands, placed 

 trumpet iashion before the mouth, saying : " Usah, usah 

 gelebeh " (don't any more). If this were no; done, the house 

 would be struck by lightning. 



We will next take some beliefs and customs connected 

 chiefly with sickness. 



If three men have planned to go on a journey or to fell 

 jungle together, but one man remains at home without saying 

 anything (i.e. excusing himself from going), and should one of 

 the two companions fall sick, his illness is at once ascribed to 

 the man who stopped behind. The two will immediately 

 return, and the third man must say charms for the recovery 

 of the patient. If, however, the man who stops at home 

 makes some excuse for not going, no ill fortune encountered 

 by his companions can be ascribed to him. 



If a man throws away the end of a cigarette or some 

 scraps of food, and what he throws away falls into a hoie in a 

 tree-stump, a mortar for pounding padi, the stump of a 

 bamboo, or any place which holds, or can hold, water, and 

 should he afterwards fall ill with pains in his stomach, he 

 thinks that this action is the cause. He will, therefore, go to 

 the place where he threw away the food fragments and remove 

 them. If he did not do this, he would not recover from his 

 illness. 



If a man is sleeping in the jungle on the ground (or some- 

 times if he is living in his house), and falls sick with itchy 

 feelings in his body or swellings, he will dig up the ground 

 under his sleeping place, and if he finds an ants' nest will 

 destroy it. The ants, so he thinks, have caused him to fall 

 sick, and the destruction of the nest insures his recovery. 



If a man who has been camping in the jungle falls sick, 

 and should remember that he has left a pole of one of the 

 shelters he has used standing in the ground, he will return and 

 pull it up, otherwise he will not recover. 



If a man sits down on a spot where the roots of two trees 

 interlace he will fall sick: for places of this kind are the 

 abodes of spirits. 



If a man leans against a tree which has a creeper twining 

 about it, he will become ill ; for this tree is the dwelling place 

 of a spirit.' The sick man will, however, recover if he returns 

 and cuts through the creeper. 



Tabus with regard to mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law 

 are in force. A man must avoid his mother-in-law as much as 

 possible, and a woman her father-in-law. 



Some very interesting information with regard to cus- 

 toms, now obsolete or nearly so, came to light during my 

 conversations with Si Busu. He told me that he had seen 



