“A strange superstition is attached to a small snail which frequents the
neighbourhood of the limestone hills in Perak. It belongs to the Cyclophoridæ,
and is probably an Alycæus. Among the grass in the shadow of a grazing animal
these creatures are to be discovered, and if one of them is crushed it will be
found to be full of blood, which has been drawn in a mysterious way from the
veins of the animal through its shadow. Where these noxious snails abound, the
cattle become emaciated and sometimes even die from the constant loss of
blood. In the folklore of other countries many parallels to this occur, but they
differ in either the birds, bats, or vampires, who are supposed to prey on the life-
blood of their fellows, going direct to the animals to suck the blood, instead of
doing so through the medium of their shadows.”^308
4. FISHING CEREMONIES
Fish are in many cases credited by the Malay peasant with the same portentous
ancestry as that which he attributes to some of the larger animals and birds.
“Many Malays refuse to eat the fresh-water fish called ikan belidah,^309 on the
plea that it was originally a cat. They declare that it squalls like a cat when
harpooned, and that its bones are white and fine like a cat’s hairs. Similarly the
ikan tumuli is believed to be a human being who has been drowned in the river,
and the ikan kalul to be a monkey transformed. Some specially favoured
observers have seen monkeys half through the process of metamorphosis—half-
monkey and half-fish.”^310
Similarly, the Dugong (Malay duyong) is asserted by some Malays to have
sprung from the remains of a pig, which Muhammad himself dined off before he
pronounced pork to be the accursed thing. Being cast by the Prophet into the
sea, it revived and took the shape of the dugong, in which shape it is still to be
found off the coast of Lukut and Port Dickson, where it feeds upon sea-grass
(rumput sĕtul), in common with a species of small tripang or bêche-de-mer.^311
The origin of the Eel (ikan b’lut) is derived from a stem of the g’li-g’li plant; the
“white-fish” (ikan puteh) from splinters, or rather shavings of wood (tatal kayu