328
MALAY FOLK-LORE.
Birds.
HE Night-Jar (Raprimulgus macrurus). One of the names given to this bird by the Malays is burong cheroh, and it is explained as follows:—
A woman was once engaged in making paddy by moonlight (this is done by pounding the grain with a wooden pestle in a large mortar and then winnowing it to separate the chaff from the rice. After the first winnowing the rice is pounded again, for the first process does not thoroughly clean it). She was pounding her rice for the second time in the process called cheroh, when for some reason or other, it is supposed in consequence of a quarrel with her mother, she was changed into a bird, and is now to be heard on moon-light nights repeating her monotonous "chunk-chunk-chunk," which the Malays think resembles the sound of the pestle descending in the grain with the measured stroke.
Burong "diam 'kau Tuah."—I have not identified the bird to which this name is given by the Malays of Perak (West Coast, Malay Peninsula). It has a curious call of six or seven notes, and the Malays discover in them the following refrain:—
"Diam 'kau, Tuah!
Kris aku ada."
The story is that this bird was once a man who lost his temper with his slave (Tuah by name), and threatened his life because the latter answered him. The Malay words mean "Keep quiet, will you, Tuah! I've got a kris!"[1]
Burong untong,—also unidentified, is said to be a small white bird
