pounded together (di-tumbok), and scattered broadcast (di-tabor) every evening
for three successive days.
When the three days are up you take cocoa-nut pulp (isi niyor) and what are
called “goat flowers” (bunga kambing), mix them, and eat them with a little
sugar, spitting some of the mixture out among the rice. [So, after a birth (as the
Pawang informed me), the young shoots of the jack-fruit (kababal nangka), the
rose-apple (jambu), and certain kinds of banana (such as pisang abu and pisang
Bĕnggala), and the thin pulp of young cocoa-nuts (kĕlongkong niyor) are mixed
with dried fish, salt, acid (asam), prawn-condiment (b’lachan), and similar
ingredients, to form a species of salad (rojak). For three successive days this
salad is administered to mother and child, the person who administers it saying,
if the child be a girl, “Your mother is here, eat this salad,” and if the child be a
boy, “Your father is here, eat this salad.”]
Invariably, too, when you enter the rice-clearing (mĕnĕmpoh ladang) you must
kiss the rice-stalks (chium tangkei padi), saying, “Cluck, cluck, soul of my
child!” (kur, sĕmangat anak aku!) just as if you were kissing an infant of your
own.
The last sheaf (as I think I have said) is reaped by the wife of the owner, who
carries it back to the house (where it is threshed out and mixed with the Rice-
soul). The owner then takes the Rice-soul and its basket and deposits it in the big
circular rice-bin used by the Malays, together with the product of the last sheaf.
Some of the product of the first seven “heads” will be mixed with next year’s
seed, and the rest will be mixed with next year’s tĕpong tawar.^223