1920. ] I. H. N. Evans: Negrito Beliefs. II 
“‘day not lucky.’’? An old man, Tokeh said, keeps count 
of the days of the month up to the sixteenth. I believe that 
this custom does not obtain among the Kintak Bong. 
‘The Grik Negritos told me that at the season when the 
jungle fruits are ripe rejoicings and feasting go on for one or 
two nights, the Spirit of the Sun (Haniu M ad-yts) and the wood 
spirits (Hantu Nthuk) being prayed to in songs, while the 
fruit-trees are asked not to send sickness, nor to make the 
people fall while climbing. After the rejoicings there is a 
three days’ tabu-period, when work is not allowable. 
Two Social Tabus. 
Among the Menik Kaien and Kintak Bong it is tabu for 
a man to speak to his mother-in-law, and among the former, 
probably also among the latter, for him to mention his brother- 
in-law by name. 
The Giving of Names. 
o most, if not all, of the Negrito tribes, the Menik 
ates! che the Kintak Bong generally give their children 
names from the species of trees, or from the rivers, near which 
they were born. My friend Tokeh, for instance, was named 
after a kind of bainboo, while another man, known among 
the Negritos as Doin (a fan-palm ; Livistona cochinchinensis), 
was for some reason called Tebu (sugar-cane) by the Malays. 
The Herald of Small-pox. 
At the time that I visited the Negritos of the Damak 
valley, they were considerably troubled about an outbreak of 
small-pox in a Malay village a few miles away, this disease 
being, with good reason, very much dreaded by them, since 
it has occasionally almost exterminated whole tribes. They 
said that the advent of small-pox is announced by a an insect 
called Imong—a kind of cicada, as far as I could find out—and 
that they had heard its note before the outbreak in — 
had occurred. 
Some Customs and Prohibitions with regard to 
Marriage. 
It seems that, with the exception ofa feast, there isno mar- 
riage ceremony among the Kintak Bong and the Menik Kaien. 
I was told by Tékeh that a man’s relations generally search 
for a wife for him, while engagements seem to be occasionally 
entered into before the girl is of a ripe age; thus it was said 
one of the men was betrothed to a girl in the settlement near 
the Damak River, but that she would not be ready for 
do not, or cannot, pronounce the letter 7. We thus — kart (Rareh) or katz, 
darah (Malay) and ~— (Negrito pronunciation), etc. 
