Fables and Folk-Tales from an Eastern Forest

[1] A man was taking his little boy home through the jungle near the headwaters of the Lebih River in the interior of Kêlántan, when they were overtaken by night. The boy was frightened and said to his father, "Father, I am so frightened, let me sleep in the middle."

The father replied, "How can you sleep in the middle seeing there are but two of us?"

Nevertheless the boy replied, "Father, I must sleep in the middle." and the father to pacify him took the boy's head in his lap, and they went to sleep together on the bank of the river. Now Rîmau the Tiger came that way and beheld a man with four arms and four legs and only a single head. Rîmau was astonished at this, and went to Buaya the Old Crocodile in the bight and said, "Friend Buaya, there is a human being asleep on the bank who has four arms and four legs and only a single head."

At this old BuAya laughed consumedly and said, "What nonsense is this? Go and snuff round about the body and you will soon find it has two heads rather than one. Whatever you seize shall be your portion, but whatever plunges into the river (to escape) shall be mine."

So Rîmau went back to snuff round the body, and as he was snuffing his whiskers tickled the man's nostrils and the man sneezed very violently. And at this Rîmau being startled leaped backwards and fell into the river, where he was himself devoured by the Crocodile according to his compact.

[1] This is one of the Tembeling Stories, and was told me as having happened on the very spot (upon the banks of the Lebih River) on which I was one night encamped. The spot was a small point of land jutting out into the stream of the Lebih which swirled angrily past, chafing at the steep bank which here disputed its passage. It was surrounded by a dense wall of jungle and it appeared just the place to expect a tiger, although it may be open to question whether crocodiles are ever met so far up-stream and above so many rapids.