Page 6 - 《原YOUNG—青少年雜誌期刊》103期

部落傳說
A heavenly woman meets a lazy husband

Origin of the Kavalan Soul-

calling Ritual

A long time ago, there was a couple living on the Lanyang

Plain. The wife, Mutumazau, was a woman from the heaven. She
had saw Siangau, a man living in poverty, and decided to come

down to the earth to give him a hand. She married him and found
a hillside with water resources. Then she took out some precious

upland rice seeds and taught him how to grow food. To her
surprise, the husband didn't want to learn. It was not until then that

she realized that she was married to a very lazy man and had to do
all the farming by herself.

Soon Mutumazau gave birth to a boy. As her husband still
refused to work in the field, she had no choice but to leave the baby

in his care. She told him never to feed the child land crabs. The lazy
husband did not listen, and always put a crab in the baby’s mouth

when the baby cried. One day, she came home and found that the
boy had eaten land crabs. She immediately took out the crabs that

the child had swallowed. The next evening, she came home and
found the same thing had happened again. Unfortunately, it was

too late this time. The child’s stomach was bitten by crabs, and
he died soon after. Mutumazau, very disappointed in her husband,
sadly buried the child.

She then performed a ritual to call the child’s soul and tried

to feed the boy before his departure. The ritual had lasted for three
days until she thought to herself that the living and the dead are,
after all, meant to take different paths. She came to realize that the

04 | 'al'alak

ɨʹ
@௅ໝෂႭ JOEE
@௅ໝෂႭ JOEE ɨʹ