Java, Facts and Fancies

In this order the procession took the road; went round the dessa twice; and finally halted at the house of the bridegroom.

The father appeared in the door, as soon as he heard the music approaching; came out to meet the procession; and advancing towards the litter of the bride, lifted her out of it, and carried her into the house, where the bridegroom's relations were seated in a circle to receive her. To these she was now, with great ceremony, introduced as the daughter of the house, whilst she and the bridegroom saluted every member of the assembly in turn, by kneeling down and kissing his or her feet.

The guests were then invited to enter, and the men sat down to a repast, at which the women served them, whilst the bride and bridegroom took their meal together, separately from the rest.

We took advantage of the momentary bustle to slip away unobserved. There was not a soul to be seen on the moonlit village street; the huts were dark and silent; and at the entrance of the village the watchman on duty for the night had left his post vacant.

A din of laughter and buzzing voices pursued us as we descended the hill-path to our bungalow. And all that night, long after the last cricket had ceased his song we heard the thin clear notes of the gamelan resounding from the heights.

EPILOGUE

As I write these lines—adding a last touch to the slight sketches in which I have endeavoured to render my impressions of this country—the shrill whistle of steam and the thudding and panting of powerful engines are in my ears, and I see the radiant sky blackened by volumes of smoke. The "campaign" has begun in the Cheribon plains. In endless file the lumbering, buffalo-drawn "pedatis"[A] creaking under the load of luscious green sugar-cane, jolt along upon the dusty road, on their way to the factory yonder,—a great, square, ungainly building, all around which there is a stir and bustle of dark figures, like the swarming of ants around an ant-hill. The gate is thrown wide; tall black shapes loom through the semi-darkness of the interior; and, now and then, the sudden flare from a furnace reveals the bulging, sooty-black mass of a boiler, or the contour of the gigantic wheel slowly revolving. The nauseous smell of the boiling syrup taints the air.

I went to the mill, the other morning, to watch the transformation of the beautiful tall reeds, which, only a few hours ago, so gaily fluttered their pennon-like leaves in the wind and sunshine without, into a shapeless pulp, and a turbid viscous liquor. The "mandoor" showed me the first sugar-bags of the season. I looked at them with some interest beyond that which they deserved in themselves. We were to be companions on the journey westwards, and already the steamer which was to convey us hence, was riding at anchor in the roadstead of Cheribon.

Last impressions, it is said, are the strongest, and those which ultimately fix the mental images. If so, I will remember Java, years hence, not as the fairy-land it seemed to me only yester day, in the sylvan solitudes of Tjerimai, but as a busy manufacturing country, prosperous and prosaic.

I will remember a rich soil, an enervating climate, alternating droughts and inundations and fever-breathing monsoons; a mode of life, comfortable and even luxurious, but monotonous in the extreme, which taxes to the utmost both mental and physical energies. I will think of white dusty towns by yellow muddy rivers; of hills, and vales, and marshy lowlands overgrown with thick, sprouting rice; of admirable irrigation works; of a system of political administration, apparently wise and equitable and conducive to the well-being of a prosperous native population. And I will be at a loss how to reconcile all these hard solid facts about Java with the airy fancier, the legends and the dreams, which must still, as with white splendours of zodiacal light, illumine my thoughts of the beautiful island.

It seems impossible that both should be true. And yet, I know that the fancies are every whit as real and living as the facts, that the poetry and the romance are as faithful representations of things as they are, as the driest prose could be.

Even now, whilst in the factory yonder, fires roar, engines pant, and human beings sweat and toil, to change the dew-drenched glory of the fields into a marketable commodity some hamlet in the plains is celebrating the Wedding of the Rice with many a mystic rite. Some native chief, celebrating the birth of a son, welcomes to his house the "dalang," the itinerant poet and playwright, who on his miniature stage, represents the councils of the Gods, and the adventures, in war and love, of unconquerable heroes, and of queens more beautiful than the dawn. And in the sacred grove of Sangean on Tjerimai, the green summit of which dominates the southern horizon, some huntsman, crouching by the shore of the legend-haunted lake, invokes the Princess Golden Orchid, and her saintly brother, Radhen Pangloera, who live in a silver palace deep down in the shining water, and who shower wealth, honour, and long life upon the mortal, who pronounces the names the spirits of the lake know them by. Nay—on this very estate, amid the smoke of the factory-chimneys romance still holds her own. The mythopœic fancy of the country-folk has enthroned a "danhjang," tutelary genius of the field, in the branches of an ancient waringin-tree out in the fields. On their way to the mill, men and women pause in its shade, to hang little paper fans on the branches, or deposit on the humble altar jessamine blossoms, yellow "boreh" unguent and new-laid eggs in homage to the agrestic god. Now, the waringin tree stands in a field of sugarcane, where its wide-spreading roots exhaust the soil, and its broad shadow kills the young plants within an ever expanding circle. Clearly, it should be cut down. But the owner of the estate, warned by recent events, wisely forbears. He chooses to put up with these inconveniences, rather than expose himself and his property to the revenge which the votaries of the Danhjang would undoubtedly take, if a sacrilegious hand were laid on his chosen abode. And so, the Sacred Waringin thrives and flourishes in the midst of the plantations of sugar-cane, a fit symbol of the romance which, in this island, pervades all things, even those the most prosaic in appearance.

It is this, I believe, this constant intrusion of the poetic, the legendary, the fanciful into the midst of reality, which constitutes the unique charm of Java. This is the secret of the unspeakable and irresistible fascination by which it holds the men of the north, born and bred among the sterner realities of European civilisation. A spell which becomes so potent as to countervail ills which otherwise would prove unbearable; and to temper, with a regret and a strange sense of want, the joys of the exile's home-coming.

And this, too, is the reason why, to me as to so many who have beheld Java not with the bodily eye alone, it must still remain a land of dreams and fancies, the Enchanted Isle where innocent beliefs and gladsome thoughts, such as are the privilege of children and childlike nations, still have their happy home.

ILLUSTRATIONS

The illustrations marked * are taken from originals in the Leyden Ethnographical Museum, those marked + from the Haarlem Colonial Museum.

Vide also: H. H. Juynboll, "Das Javanische Maskenspiel" in: Intern. Archiv. für Ethn. XIV 41.

L. Serrurier, De Wayang Poerwâ. Eene ethnologische studie. Leiden 1896.

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