82 MALAY POISONS AND CHARM CUBES 



got very much annoyed and planned their death. 

 He ordered a well to be dug in his grounds, but con- 

 cealed ill such a way that no one should suspect its 

 existence. Wlien this was done, he invited the seven 

 minstrels to play at his palace. As they advanced 

 across the pitfall they aU tumbled into the well together, 

 whereupon the king ordered it to be filled in at once, 

 Not long afterwards cholera attacked the royal house- 

 hold, and his Highness, seeking to discover the cause 

 of his misfortune, called in his homor. After some time 

 the bomor found that it was due to anger on the part 

 of the ghosts of the murdered men because no propitia- 

 tion had been offered. The seven ghosts eventually 

 agreed with the bomor to leave the countiy provided a 

 boat filled with various kinds of food should be launched 

 and floated out to sea." 



The survival of this superstition m launching such 

 vessels at sunrise is still existent in Kelantan. During 

 the height of an outbreak of cholera (August, 1920) I 

 passed a pretty httle model of a steam launch, made out 

 of the stem and leaves of the sago pakn, floating empty 

 down stream. It finally stranded on the river bank 

 near the mouth of the Kelantan river. Kelantan folk 

 still thmk that ghosts devoui* the offerings (sweets, 

 cakes, eggs, a few cents, yellow rice) placed on board 

 these strange craft, and that cholera v^nH, if epidemic, 

 occur wherever the empty boat happens to get stranded 

 unless the sacrifice, contributed by public subscription, 

 is replenished and the little ship again shoved out to 

 sea by the bonwr. In Perak the ceremony is rather 

 different. Mr. A. F. Worthington, of the Malayan 

 Civil Service, told me that during a cholera outbreak in 

 Lower Perak (1902) he assisted in lami clung one of 

 these boats. It contained a crew made of three neat 

 Httle wooden dolls, each about three inches high. The 



