IN COCK-PIT AND BULL-RING
There's joy in all sport, no matter the sort,
In each game that is fought for and won;
There's joy in the skill, that helps to a kill,
Be the weapon, rod, spear, or gun.
There's joy in the chase, in the rush of a race,
In all that is fierce and strong;
There's joy in the strife, that is war to the knife,
Let those who will, brand it as wrong.
But no joy that we know, in our life here below,
For man, or for bird, or for cattle,
Can come within sight of the gorgeous delight,
The glorious frenzy of battle!Taking them by and large the Malays have no bowels. Physical pain, even if
endured by human beings, excites in them but little sympathy or compassion,
and to the beasts that perish they are often almost as wantonly cruel as an
English drayman. The theory that men owe any duties to the lower animals, is
one which the Malays cannot be readily made to understand; and the idea of
cruelty to a beast can only be expressed in their language by a long and
roundabout sentence. The Malays can hardly be blamed for this perhaps, seeing
that, even among our immaculate selves, a consideration for animals is of
comparatively modern origin, and the people of the Peninsula, as I have been at
some pains to show, are in their ideas on many subjects, much what our
ancestors were some hundreds of years ago. A few animals, however, are hedged
about and protected by some ancient superstition, the origin of which is now
totally forgotten, but even these do not escape scot free. Thus, it is a common
belief among Malays, that, if a cat is killed, he who takes its life, will in the next
world, be called upon to carry and pile logs of wood, as big as cocoa-nut trees, to
the number of the hairs on the beast's body. Therefore cats are not killed; but, if
they become too daring in their raids on the hen-coop, or the food rack, they are
tied to a raft and sent floating down-stream, to perish miserably of hunger. The