These rings and bracelets are of course the nooses which depend from the toils.
In a charm of similar import we find:—
“Ho, Crown Prince (Raja Muda) with your Speckled Princess (Pŭtri Dandi),
Rouse you quickly (from your slumbers)
And clasp (round your neck) King Solomon’s necklace.”I may add that in some places the Pawang (magician) will himself first enter the
toils, probably with the object of deceiving the stag as to their nature and
purpose.
The ceremonies for hunting deer are somewhat intricate, and it will perhaps be
best to commence by giving a general description of deer-catching as practised
by the Malays.
“This pastime”^97 (deer-catching) “is one the Malay delights in. After a rainy
night, deer may be easily traced to their lair by their footprints, and as they
remain stationary by day the hunters have ample time to arrange their apparatus.
When the hiding-place is discovered all the young men of the kampong^98
assemble, and the following ceremony is performed before they sally out on the
expedition: Six or eight coils of rattan rope, about an inch in diameter, are placed
on a triangle formed with three rice-pounders, and the oldest of the company,
usually an experienced sportsman, places a cocoa-nut shell filled with burning
incense in the centre, and taking sprigs of three bushes, viz. the jellatang,
sapunie, and sambon^99 plants (these, it is supposed, possess extraordinary
virtues), he walks mysteriously round the coils, beating them with the sprigs, and
erewhile muttering some gibberish, which, if possessing any meaning, the sage
keeps wisely to himself. During the ceremony the youths of the village look on
with becoming gravity and admiration. It is believed that the absence of this
ceremony would render the expedition unsuccessful, the deer would prove too
strong for the ropes, and the wood demons frustrate their sport by placing
insurmountable obstacles in their way. Much faith appears to be placed in the
ceremony. Each coil referred to above is sixty to seventy fathoms long, and to
the rope running nooses, made also of rattan rope, are attached about three feet
apart from each other. On reaching the thicket wherein the deer are concealed,
stakes are driven into the ground a few feet apart in a straight line, the coils are
then opened out, and the rope attached to the stakes, two or three feet above the