Why are there no tigers in Borneo? (Following folktales around the world 199. - Indonesia)

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!

Indonesian legends & folk tales
told by Adéle de Leeuw
Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1961.

This book would have benefited from a map and a source list. Each story notes which island it is from, but it was hard to keep track. It also has no introduction, even though I would have been curious about the author, and the collection process of the tales (and how much they have been rewritten). All the volume has is a glossary of Indonesian words. However, the stories themselves were fairly interesting.

Highlights

I had two favorite tales in the book. One was The sea of children, about a boy who ate the sacrifice meant for the sea goddess, so in punishment his father was washed away while collecting swallow nests. The boy set out to save him, changed into a lizard with the help of a spirit, and did not only rescue the father from octopuses, but also managed to fix his own mistakes. The other tale, the sacred fish of Polaman, was about a pariah who set out into the jungle with a handful of magic fish. He met a brahman woman who was about to be burned on her late husband's funeral pyre. They ran away together, fell in love, survived in the jungle, and even made a miracle happen. 

There was a dark story about Cholera, Death, and Fear traveling together and visiting a town; while Cholera killed 400 people, Fear killed more than a thousand. It is a folktale type people love to bring up these days about the coronavirus. There was also a lovely story about a boy whom people accused of having a bad spirit and bringing bad luck to the rice fields; in the end an old woman adopted him, and they worked a small rice paddy until the gods rewarded them for their kindness to each other. The story of the exiled prince was a love story where the lovers turned into a tree and a fountain, and the prince's faithful brother into a bird, because he wanted to watch over them in their exile. 

There were smaller details I loved, for example the King of Rains who lives in a rainbow palace, or the magic tree that bore silk leaves and earrings as flowers.
As an archaeologist I loved the tale where the pots of a divine potter were scared by a storm, so they buried themselves in the ground to escape... and that is why people still find old pots in the ground today.

Connections

I was familiar with the tale type where a hunter started planning how he was going to grow rich from his catch - and because of his daydreaming the catch escaped. The story of fire, water and honor was familiar from American storytellers - the three of them were friends who got lost, and while fire and water were found again, lost honor could never be regained. The tale of the spider that wove a net in the mouth of a cave to hide the fleeing Prophet was also a classic.

The trickster in residence is Mouse Deer, on his home turf. There were tales about crocodile counting, tiger tricking, apocalypse, etc. After Brunei I once again encountered the tale that explains why there are no tigers in Borneo (because Kanchil scared them away, obviously). Talking about tricksters: Hanuman also made a guest appearance.

Where to next?
East Timor!