The Folklore of the Hikayat Malim Deman 
By R. 0. Winstedt, D. Litt., (Oxon). 
In the Malay folk romance Malim Deman (ed. R. 0. Winstedt 
and A. J. Sturrock, Singapore 1908) the hero from whom the tale 
takes its name finds the ring and a tress of hair of the princess he 
is fated to wed in a golden bowl afloat on a stream. He fumigates 
them with incense whereupon their owner and her six sisters fly 
down from fairy-land. Malim Deman steals the magic flying 
raiment of the youngest princess and so wins her for his bride. 
Owing to neglect she flies home to fairy-land with her child. 
Malim Deman borrows a boral ■ — the flying animal whereon the 
Prophet Mohamed ascended to heaven — from genies, pursues and 
regains his wife and brings her back to earth. 
Now the episode of a prince falling in love with a princess 
from finding her hair floating downstream, besides occurring in an 
Egyptian romance three thousand years old (Clouston’s “Popular 
Tales and Fictions,” vol. I, p. 351), is common in Indian folk- 
lore: — No. 4 of Lai Bahari Day’s “Folk-tales of Bengal,” and 
the second story of the Tamil romance “ Madana Kamaraja Kadai,” 
translated by Pandit S. M. Natesa Sastri. In a Sinhalese folk- 
tale a king finding a hair in a fish’s belly wishes to wed the owner 
(Parker’s “Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon,” vol. II, p. 168, Tale 
111). Incidentally one may note that a hair in a bowl is one of 
the regalia of the Yamtuan of Negri Sembilan. 
Magic flying raiment ( baju laijang kain layang ) is part of the 
stock-in-trade of the world’s folk-lore. Nymphs, apsaras or fairies 
bathing, and one of them having her clothes (Tawney’s Katha 
Sarit Sagara, vol. II, p. 452 and 576; a Bengal story in “ The In- 
dian Antiquary,” vol. I A', p. 54; Thornhill’s “ Indian Fairy Tales” 
p. 15) or flying garments ( Swynnerton’s Indian Nights “Enter- 
tainments, p. 343) stolen by a man who marries her is a very 
common plot in Indian folk-lore and literature. In the Persian 
romance of King Bahrain Ghur and Husin Banu the hero obtains 
his fairy bride by filching her dove-dress (Clouston op. cit., vol. I, 
pp. 182-191).” There is a Santali version of the story and a Jap- 
anese (B. H. Chamberlain’s “Classical Poetry of the Japanese”). 
Of. also Parker op. cit., vol. II, Tale 152, p. 359. But of course 
the classical story of the bride-maidens is the tale of Hasan of 
Bassorah in the “Arabian Nights” (Burton, vol. VIII, p. 7). 
The world-wide circulation of the myth of the swan-maiden 
and its various forms and stages is discussed by Hartland on pages 
255-332 of “The Science of Fairy Tales” (London 1891). 
Jour. Straits Branch 
