A note on the Tagals of Sarawak
A brief ethnographic note by E. V. Andreini describing the customs, beliefs, and material culture of the Tagal people of Sarawak.
Summary
Andreini documents the Tagals’ distinctive amusement called “Ungakang,” in which young men jump on spring boards in the long house verandah while women in their best dress lock-step around them on the swaying boards, a practice he identifies as a survival of a head dance (p. 217). He notes their artistic inclinations in door ornamentation, bamboo pipes, and combs, as well as their fine chorus singing, and records their practice of tattooing as a means of providing light when the eyes close in death.
The note also records Tagal cosmogonic narratives — including one in which the Sun laid three eggs producing a Murut, a Tagal, and a third people, and another in which the first man dug holes for rivers and whose youngest child was drowned in the Runi — as well as their funerary practice of placing beads in the mouth of the dead to deceive a snake-guardian at the entrance to the dead man’s country (p. 217). Andreini further observes their belief in bird omens limited to the first two days of a journey, the attribution of head-hunting’s origin to women, certain women’s refusal to eat deer’s flesh as reincarnation of the dead, and the robust construction of their houses relative to surrounding Murut dwellings.