Cool stories from a tiny country (Following folktales 197. - Brunei)

Today I continue the blog series titled Following folktales around the world! If you would like to know what the series is all about, you can find the introduction post here. You can find all posts here, or you can follow the series on Facebook!

Dusun Folktales
A collection of eighty-eight folktales in the Dusun language of Brunei with English translations
Eva Maria Kershaw
University of Hawaii, 1994.

This book was a slow read, mostly because it is three hundred pages long (even if half of it is in Dusun). It looks hand-typed and I could only get it through inter-library loan, but it was still a fascinating read. The mirror translation did not always explain details in the stories, but there were some very helpful footnotes. The book contains 88 folktales from the Dusun, an indigenous group from Borneo. This was the only folktale collection from Brunei I could find. According to the author at the time of the collecting the Brunei government did not support the teaching of indigenous languages, or the preservation of their customs. Hence the bilingual volume that hoped to give the tales back to their community. At the time of its publication (1994) they projected that the Dusun language would disappear within 50 years.

Since this is a folklore publication, the tales are translated word for word, without censorship, including the adult and erotic themes.

Highlights

The myth about how people asked to die was very interesting; it was a rare story where death was not a mistake, or divine punishment, but rather something humans asked from the gods, to stop the world from being overpopulated. There was a beautiful nature myth too, about how the dollarbird brings fruit season every year to Borneo.

The tale of Princess Boar was a fascinating story about a hunter who ventured into the land of boars where the animals live as humans. He became a healer, and learned that his prey had feelings too. His brother, who was less kind-hearted, met a violent end. 

There was a very cool fight scene where twins with supernatural powers used a giant, bladed spinning top to kill a man-eating giant eagle. Also, a clever girl who disguised herself as an old woman by borrowing features from various animals (e.g. red eyes, thick thighs, white hair). There was Camphor Woman (camphor apparently was an important part of Dusun trade), and I learned that many stories feature five siblings because they are named after the five fingers (to make a storyteller's job easier...). 

The most important tidbit I learned, however, is the sound you hear when someone is kicked in the face by a tortoise. It sounds like this:

(According to the English translation, anyway.)

Connections

I loved the Dusun variant of the Brementown musicians. It featured a piece of excrement that set out on an adventure; floating down the river it imagined itself to be a pirate, and with the help of a scorpion and a centipede managed to scare the hell out of a household of people.

After China and Myanmar there was once again a tale about a girl who married a giant serpent, and was swallowed on the wedding night. There were kinder serpent husbands, and girls born from lemons as well among the classic tale types.

My personal favorite was Miss Buncu in the land of the tani dogs, a Dusun variant of the Kind and Unkind Girls tale type. Tani dogs are somewhat disgusting, man-eating creatures, who nonetheless treated their human guest in a very kind and friendly manner, as long as she did not make fun of their food (worms for rice, ears for mushrooms, etc.). They even made sure she got a different "vegan" menu. 

Obviously there were many Mouse Deer tales, some nicer than others (I was not happy when Mouse Deer raped someone). 

Where to next?
The Philippines!