I will minimise my benediction (lit. my ‘Peace be with you’).
If it (the deer) be a buck, you shall have him for a brother;
If it be a doe, you shall have her for a wife.”So too, again, after calling several dogs by name, the Pawang gets together the
accessories (leaves of the tukas and lĕnjuang, a brush of leaves (sa-chĕrek) and a
black cloth), and exclaims:—
“Bark, Sir Slender-foot; bark, Sir Brush-tail.”The Pawang generally tries to deceive the deer as to his ownership of the
hunting-dogs. Thus he will say:—
“It is not I whose dogs these are,
It is the magical deer Pawang whose dogs these are.”So, too, they are called by certain specific names (according to their breed and
colour), which are in several cases identical with the names of the dogs with
which the wild Spectre Huntsman (the most terrible of all personified diseases in
the Malay category) hunts down his prey.^111
Ugliness is by no means looked upon as a disadvantage, but rather the opposite.
An ugly dog is apparently formidable. Thus we find a dog addressed as follows:
—
“Let not go the scent (of the quarry)
As you were formidable (lit. ugly)^112 from the first.”Again, the description of the “good points” of some of these dogs which is given
in the Appendix would, if ugliness and formidability are convertible terms,
satisfy the most exacting whipper-in, the so-called good points being for the
most part a mere list of deformities. These points, however, are merely the
external sign of the Luck to which dogs, as well as human beings, are believed to
be born. In a fine passage we are told:—
“From the seven Hills and the seven Valleys
Comes the intense barking of my Dogs.
My Dogs are Dogs of Luck,