A Wave From Way Back

It is a well-known fact that fish gets to parts other comestibles only aspire to reach. The brain, for instance, and what memories does the Omega 3 rake up and fish protein (kerepok) brings all manner of hidden things back to the top of your head.

No one has yet come up with a description or the title of the school-book that I mentioned in A Book, A Beach & Memory”, and then, Ajidul of Kampong Kolang sends me this note:

“Mase ambe dalam darjah dua di Sekölöh Melayu Paye Bunge dulu, ambe teringat ade membace buku yang dème sebut tu.” When I was in Class II of the Malay School Paya Bunga I remember reading the book that you spoke about.

And then he adds: “Dalam bok tu, ade terulis rangkapan pantun nasihat ....*”
Terang bulan bintang berseri
Ombak memukul ke pantai landai
Rajinlah belajar setiap hari
Supaya cepat menjadi pandai.

Terang bulan bintang berbanjar
Kapal belayar di laut Jawa
Masa budak wajib belajar
Bila besar tidak kecewa.
And there you see it, the line I was looking for, in the second line of the first stanza. As you may well imagine, I was a cock and a hoop with delight.

If you carry an old map of Kuala Trengganu in your head you’ll know that Kampong Kölang is but a stone’s throw from the Sekölöh Paya Bunga (shorter if you walked through the cemetery of the long dead). But as you can see from this gem that has cropped up, Tuang Ajidul was not one to throw stones at the Sekölöh; he did go there to improve his head (and it has now brought results). Thank you Tuang Ajidul, very much!

And then my thanks to all of you who have sent in comments (publicly or privately), and especially to Suhaili [see Comments, below]. She suggests that perhaps the Trengganuspeak word lajök is a noun derived from another word form, just as sounds are turned into onomatopoeias in speech. There may well be something there as verbs are sometimes transformed into nouns in a process known as nominalisation in linguistics; though the reverse (verbification) is what we are more used to nowadays.

Thanks Suhaili, much appreciated! PS I enjoyed meeting all of you at the USM (but forgive me for the boring talk).