378
enemies know her name and origin and that they have a greater mastery of charms than she.
Leubè Peureuba.As might be supposed, however, the burōng has some characteristics which are peculiarly Achehnese. Sundry strange tales are told by the Achehnese as to her origin. These exhibit local differences, but agree in some respects, especially in the assertion that one Leubè[1] Peureuba, who in his lifetime was a hatib or Friday preacher in a mosque, played a principal part in connection therewith.
This man had an intrigue with a certain woman, and his passion for her was so great that one Friday he was still dallying with her when the time for the weekly service arrived. He betook himself in all haste to the mosque, and omitted the bath of purification which is indispensable after sexual intercourse for the efficacy of a çalāt or prayer. He also forgot to return to his mistress her earrings, which for a jest he had hidden on the bara or main beam of the house.
When he had mounted the pulpit and commenced the service in the customary manner, leaning on his great staff, his paramour entered the mosque and enquired of him "where are my earrings?" In reply he recited the Arabic words from the service barra ʾrraʾūf arraḥīm[2], indicating the bara as the place where the earrings were hidden. The woman asked him other questions all of which he answered by fragments of the Arabic service, whose sound recalled Achehnese words[3]. This unholy by-play ended in the hatib Peureuba suddenly falling from the pulpit and being killed by the iron point of his own preacher's staff.
According to one view he now became the burōng, parent of all subsequent burōngs, some of whom were derived from deceased women of loose morals, and others from those who fell a prey to burōngs during pregnancy or at child-birth. Others narrate that his mistress was killed by the congregation immediately after her lover's fall, and
- ↑ See p. 71 above.
- ↑ (
Arabic characters) epithets of God, used in praise of him in the beginning of the service.
- ↑ Thus she is said to have asked him: "What is that tree whose leaves are as big as a rice-sieve and its roots as big as rice-pounders?" whereupon he gave her the name of the tree birah by reciting the Arabic formula biraḥmatika ya arḥam arrāḥimīn = "by thy mercy, O most Merciful of the merciful." In reply to her question "what are the plants which stand in a row?" he recited the words: wakhtilāf al-aili wan-nahār ("day and night succeeding one another") the first of which suggests keutila, a kind of vegetable.
