Father Civet
R.O. Winstedt published “Father Civet” in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (No. 50, 1908) as a brief beast fable of the Aesop type, presenting both an English synopsis and the full Malay text of a Perak folk tale attributed to a local penghulu. The tale illustrates the fatal consequences of gullibility and broken trust through the repeated betrayals of two chicks who disclose their mother’s roosting-place to a predatory civet cat.
Summary
The piece consists of a short English summary (p. 85) followed by the complete Malay text (pp. 86–90). Winstedt explicitly distinguishes this tale from the more elaborate Musang Bejanggut (“The Bearded Civet-Cat”), noting that the language is so simple a literal translation would be tiresome. The narrative follows a hen and two chicks displaced from their kampong to a hill rice-clearing. A civet cat, posing as a prospective step-father, repeatedly extracts the hen’s roosting-place from the chicks, who each time reveal it before the hen, angry at their “tell-tale” behaviour, moves to a higher perch. The pattern escalates from the threshold to the cross-beam to the ridge-pole, and on the final night the civet cat reaches the hen and devours all three.
The Malay text is written in a colloquial Perak register with characteristic orthographic features of early twentieth-century Malay transcription (e.g., ë for schwa, ch for /tʃ/), and it is explicitly attributed at the close to Pëng Hulu Raja Haji Yahya bin Raja Muhammad Ali, di-mukim Chëndrang di-dalam nëgëri Perak (p. 90).
Key Findings
- The tale is attributed to Peng Hulu Raja Haji Yahya bin Raja Muhammad Ali of Mukim Chendrang, Perak, making it one of the few JSBRAS folk texts with a named local informant (p. 90).
- Winstedt positions the tale as a simple Aesop-type beast fable, deliberately distinguishing it from the more complex Musang Bejanggut (p. 85).
- The Malay text employs a colloquial Perak dialect with consistent early-1900s orthographic conventions (ë, ch, bë-, ka-), reflecting spoken rather than literary Malay (pp. 86–90).
- The moral structure is tripartite: three successive betrayals escalate the hen’s position (threshold → cross-beam → ridge-pole) before the final, fatal failure of trust (pp. 85–86).
- The tale’s closing line — “bëroleh rëzki yang tëlah di-chari-chari itu, di-përoleh-nya juga. Ada-nya.” (“the sustenance he had long sought, he at last obtained. It was there”) — frames the civet’s success as a kind of karmic inevitability (p. 90).
Conclusion
Winstedt presents the tale as a straightforward example of Malay oral tradition in which the moral — that careless talk and broken promises invite destruction — is delivered without irony or elaboration. The piece functions primarily as a specimen of vernacular Perak Malay preserved in written form, its value lying in the dialectal register and the named attribution rather than in any analytical commentary.
Context
- Winstedt, then a young colonial administrator and emerging scholar of Malay literature, was actively collecting and publishing Malay folk narratives in the JSBRAS during this period; this piece is part of that broader documentation effort.
- The named attribution to a penghulu (village headman) of Mukim Chendrang, Perak, is notable for the period, as most JSBRAS folk texts of the era were anonymous or attributed only to a region.