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From Fables & Folk-Tales from an Eastern Forest, Collected and Translated by Walter Skeat, M.A., Illustrated by F. H. Townsend; Cambridge: At the University Press; 1901; pp. 67-70, 84.

THE OUTWITTING OF THE GĒDÉMBAI.^a

THERE was formerly a race of gigantic spirits named Gĕdémbai who could turn people whom they addressed by name into wood or stone. Many years ago they were very numerous and were a great danger to the forest-dwelling Malays. In many places there are still to be seen the clearest traces of their former presence and power. Near the headwaters of the T⁕mbĕling close to the left bank of the river stands a rock on which are still shown the claw-marks of a tiger, which escaped from the Gĕdémbai by leaping the river (where it was ten fathoms across), when a wild boar which it was pursuing was turned into stone. There to 68 this day you may see the Petrified Boar, and the place is known by the name of the Tiger’s Leap. Further down the river stands a high and solitary crag, the summit of which is the shelter where the Gĕdémbai used to dry by day the fish they had caught during the previous night. There too you may see the big river-pool into which they threw their casting net, and the rocks which they dropped into the river (in place of the stones thrown in to attract the fish before the cast is made with the net).^b

Such was the havoc wrought by the Gĕdémbai that the older inhabitants at length conspired together to frighten them out of the land. For the Gĕdémbai were incredible fools, and could be cheated with great facility. And as they only went abroad at night, the Malays used certain stratagems to frighten the Gĕdémbai out of the country.

Pulling down the long weeping sprays of bamboo that overhung the streams, they cut them off short, and then let them spring back again to an upright position, so that the Gĕdémbai might think that only giants could have reached up to cut them.

Next they put an old man upwards of sixty years of age in a child’s swinging cot, so that the Gĕdémbai seeing his toothless gums supposed him to be a newborn infant. And when the Gĕdémbai had thus been thoroughly cheated, they were easily made to believe that the harrows lying beside the rice-fields were Malay hair-combs, and that the very tortoises were insects that infested their persons; but that nevertheless they could make themselves small enough to creep inside the sheath of a dagger in order to hollow it out.

At length therefore the Gĕdémbai lost heart, and fled to the Country at the Foot of the Sky, but as they fled they called upon everybody they met to follow after them, turning all who refused to obey them into trees. Hence you will see in Malayan forests many lofty trees leaning over rivers. These were once men and women who refused to follow the Gĕdémbai in their flight, and were so severely kicked by them in consequence, that they have never since been able to stand upright. Here and there you will see trees whose silvery outer bark peels off in strips. These too, which are now 70 Pahlawan trees,^c were once human beings, but were transformed into trees for refusing to follow the Gĕdémbai, who caused their bark to fall off in patches by stroking the skin of their own breasts.

[84] Notes.

^a  The Outwitting of the Gĕdémbai.

This class of spirits is usually called K’lembai, but as this tale is from Ulu Pahang (Tĕmbĕling River) I have retained the local form of the name. I quote in conclusion an interesting note from the J. R. A. S. by the late Sir William Maxwell, which runs as follows: —

“sperti bujuk lĕpas deri bubu.
“Like a ‘bujuk’ fish escaped from the trap.

“Bujuk is a fresh-water fish found in muddy places. Bubu is a fish-trap made of split bamboo tied with rattan. It has a circular opening which narrows as the end of the passage is reached and is constructed on the same principle as the eel-pot or lobster-pot. One of the highest mountains in Perak is called Bubu. It is supposed to be the fish-trap of the mythological personage named Sang Kalembai, and the rocks in the bed of the Perak river at Pachat are pointed out as his Sawar (stakes which are put down to obstruct a stream and thus to force the fish to take the opening which leads to the trap).”

[Maxwell in J. R. A. S., S. B. no. 1, p. 145.]

^b  This is a common Malay practice for netting fresh-water fish. The stones thrown in are called “Batu Tungkul.”

^c  Pahlawan = Tristania whitiana, a striking tree in Malayan forests. Its bark peels off in strips.

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