Part One of the shelf: four pieces from Folk-lore in Borneo (Wallingford, Pennsylvania, 1899) by William Henry Furness the Third, a Philadelphia physician who travelled in Borneo in the eighteen nineties and took these traditions down by word of mouth. Billed by peoples, collector and book — tales of the Kayan and Dayak peoples of Borneo, the great island the Borneans themselves call Kalamantan — not a survey of all the peoples of Indonesia, and no completeness is claimed. Furness's sketch also tells a tradition of the origin of head-hunting and an account of the country of the dead; both are set aside under this channel's standing rule and are named in the shelf register.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
The Kayan Story of Creation — in the old, old days a rock falls from the heavens, a sword-handle dropped from the Sun grows into the great tree, a vine falls from the Moon, and the first people, the birds and beasts, and fire itself come into the world. The Dayak Story of Creation — the two great birds Iri and Ringgong make the rivers, the trees and man himself, first of clay, then of wood, then of the red-sapped Kumpong tree, and the dog chooses to follow man. How Rice Came to the Dayaks — Si Jura climbs the fruit tree that hangs from the sky to the country of the Pleiades, learns rice-farming from Si Kira, and is lowered home with three kinds of rice. A Kayan Lullaby — the song a Kayan mother sang over her child, as Furness learned it.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:38 The Kayan Story of Creation
8:35 The Dayak Story of Creation
14:32 How Rice Came to the Dayaks
18:29 A Kayan Lullaby
William Henry Furness, Folk-lore in Borneo (privately printed, Wallingford, 1899) — public domain. The rice tale is quoted there from Sir Spenser St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East (1862).
Narrated by Felix. Music: opening and closing theme, "Istanbul Cello Nocturne" — heard at the introduction and the close, with a short separator of the same theme between the stories; the tales themselves are read dry.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
Borneo folk tales · Dayak folk tales · Kayan folk tales · Folk-lore in Borneo · William Henry Furness · Indonesian folk tales · creation myths · world folk tales
