“I have been assured that the shaving process is so efficacious that, as the vessel represents the head of the person standing his trial, wherever it is scraped the wizard’s hair will fall off in a corresponding spot. It might be supposed that under these circumstances the accused is reasonably safe, but this test of guilt is not always employed. What more commonly happens is that when several cases of unexplained sickness have occurred in a village, with possibly one or two deaths, the people of the place lodge a formal complaint against the supposed author of these ills, and desire that he be punished.
“Before the advent of British influence it was the practice to kill the wizard or witch whose guilt had been established to Malay satisfaction, and such executions were carried out not many years ago.
“I remember a case in Perak less than ten years ago, when the people of an up-river village accused a man of keeping a bajang, and the present Sultan, who was then the principal Malay judge in the State, told them he would severely punish the bajang if they would produce it. They went away hardly satisfied, and shortly after made a united representation to the effect that if the person suspected were allowed to remain in their midst they would kill him. Before anything could be done they put him, his family, and effects on a raft and started them down the river. On their arrival at Kuala Kangsar the man was given an isolated hut to live in, but not long afterwards he disappeared.”[50]
The same authority tells us: “Langsuior, the female familiar, differs hardly at all from the bajang, except that she is a little more baneful, and when under the control of a man he sometimes becomes the victim of her attractions, and she will even bear him elfin children.” The original Langsuir, legend says, was a woman of the most superb beauty, who died from the shock of hearing that her child was still-born, and had taken the shape of the Pontianak. When this terrible news was reported to her, she “clapped her hands,” and without further warning “flew whinnying away to a tree, upon which she perched.” She always wears a robe of exquisite green. Her tapering nails are of extraordinary length, which is considered among the Malays a mark of distinction and beauty, and which may be compared with the
