A NANING RECITAL. 
3 
after hearing all the wisdom of Solomon ; there was no more spirit 
in him. 
Ungkai Lisut’s own account of his triumph was as follows : 
“‘Wliat is this?’ I said, ‘No answer? Surely a drum 
should be beaten at both ends, not at one end only? Have I been 
displaying fine clothes to the blind, showing off a fine voice to the 
deaf? Am l both to spin the top and peg it as well? If you can 
go higher, show me the branches: if you Can go deeper, show me 
the roots!’ 
The Brisu man made a sour face and kept absolutely dumb. 
When, my people saw that he could not give an answer they raised 
three lotid cheers, and then I paid over the bride-price and we went 
i on with the wedding.” 
The recital falls naturally into three divisions: 
First, a prelude, addressed to the Elder of the bride’s clan and 
the wedding guests (lines 1 to 51) ; 
Second, a Song of Origins ( Teromba ), telling the myth of 
the two Malay Customs (the law of Talion and the law of Re- 
paration ) and the coming of Menangkabau immigrants to the- 
Peninsula (lines 52 to 2715) ; 
Third, a peroration, telling of the speaker’s present purpose — 
the marriage of his clansman (lines 277 to 330). 
It is not easy to find an English parallel to this form of com- 
position, but the ‘ Song of Origins ’ recalls at times the tone and 
mood of an older Oriental poem — the ‘historical’ Psalm: 
“I will open my mouth in a parable: I will declare hard 
sentences of old; 
Which we have heard and known: and such as oxlx fathers have 
told us 
When there were yet but a few of them: and they strangers in 
the land; 
What time as they went from one nation to another: frotn one 
kingdom to another people. ... * 
That their posterity might know it: and the children which 
were yet unborn.” 
If we want to feel whether the ‘ Song of Origins ’ is good poetry 
or not we must picture the crowded wedding-feast, and the old 
man reciting the tale of the Custom (with gesture and beat of 
drum at each cadence of the rhythmical accented verse) to the sons 
of Menangkabau ‘in a strange land ’ : only then can we understand 
how good the work is, how fitted for its time and place, how full 
of true pleasure. 
I am indebted for suggestions to several friends, in particular 
to Mr. J. E. Nathan, District Officer of Kuala Pilah, whose in- 
quiries with Negri Sembilan Chiefs have greatly helped the elucida- 
tion of some obscure passages in the Malay text. 
R. A. Soc., No. 83, 1921. 
