Riddles of the Dusuns
While engaged in husking rice, the Dusun of North Borneo will enliven their work by proposing riddles to each other:
1. It creeps and its path is invisible. (a boat)
2. Digging all day and it digs nothing out. (a paddle)
3. Planted in the morning and cut down in the evening. (the sun)
4. Planted and immediately dug up again.(a thorn in the foot)
5. You are two brothers. If you steal you both steal. (nostrils)
6.It rises but has no legs. (smoke)
7. It appears big at night but small during the day. (a lamp)
8. Sweeping all day but does not finish. ( The tail of a buffalo)
9. Hammering all day but there is no firewood. (woodpecker)
10.It lies down but does not sleep. ( the river)
11. It inundates and there is no watershed. (perspiration)
12. It lies on its parent. (the roof)
13. Hungry it goes out, and when it has eaten, it goes home. (a water can)
14. The parent is carried. (the hen by its chicks)
15. It hangs upon it but does not ascend.(the stairs on a house)
16. White covers black and black covers white.(light and darkness)
17. When you beat the root, light appears. (shelling rice)
18 The loser laughs, and the finder gets angry. (passing gas)
19. If you put its tail in your mouth, it glows. (a cigar)
20.You cannot descend without counting the knots. (the steps)
21. Planted on cleared land, it will not grow. Planted the jungle, it does grow. (a fire)
22. Small is the girl, but she can repair what is bad (a needle)
23.It will not eat if you do not beat its head. (a chisel)
24.It is fed and at once strangled. ( a sack)
25. It eats but once, but not again. (a pillow)
26. Carried in the arms of the poor, beaten by the rich. (The fiddle and the gong)
27. If the broom rises, the rich go down. (Dust)
28.The shaken, not the shaker, is seen. (the wind)
29. The most necessary food cannot be chewed. (water)
30.Knees behind. ( a cow)
31. Running with a flag. ( a dog with a tail)
32. It will not open its mouth if you do not hold up its bones. ( a fan)
33. Can travel around, yet cannot go home. (Leaves)
34.When it grows long, its coat falls off. (bamboo)
35. It cannot rise without a stick. (the bean)
36. It flies and has no wings and perches on a winged creature ( an arrow)
37. Let me be a little bigger, and I will smash the heavens.(a chicken within an egg)
38. You are two brothers, and both sweep the heavens.(the eyes)
Some difficult ones
39. It eats everything except rice. (the sole of the foot) The natives, going barefoot, tread on everything but a plate of rice.
40. With head pinched and feet rocking( a potato), the tuber is pinched by the soil while the feet(leaves) sway in the wind.
41. When going out, it is taken on the back. When returning on the lap.(a door)When one leaves the house the door is to your back. When returning, it is in front of you, on your lap.
42.The parent is carried. (the hen by its chicks)The chickens under the parents’ wing convey the notion that the hen is carried upright by her brood.
43. Two scratch together another hammer. (Chickens) The two feet scratch the ground while the head pecks or hammers.
44. A fine ballroom for hundreds is the wooden floor. (rain on the roof)People dance on the wooden floor.
45.Your mother is still far away, and already you show your bones. (to laugh) The child sees his mother from afar, showing his teeth(bones)
46. The child is more ferocious than the parent. (grass seed)When walking through grass, the seed clings to one’s clothes.
Prenger, J The Dusuns and their Riddles Kota Kinabalu: Sabah Museum and Archives, 1985
Many thanks to Veronica Chang Schmidt
Tom McLaughlin for BorneoHistory.net