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The Malays
cultivate the tree for the sake of its fruit, and have been known to
resort to a peculiar ceremony for the purpose of stimulating its
fertility. Near Jugra in Selangor there is a small grove of
durian-trees, and on a specially chosen day the villagers used to
assemble in it. Thereupon one of the local sorcerers would take a
hatchet and deliver several shrewd blows on the trunk of the most
barren of the trees, saying, "Will you now bear fruit or not? If you
do not, I shall fell you." To this the tree replied through the
mouth of another man who had climbed a mangostin-tree hard by (the
durian-tree being unclimbable), "Yes, I will now bear fruit; I beg
of you not to fell me." So in Japan to make trees bear fruit two men
go into an orchard. One of them climbs up a tree and the other
stands at the foot with an axe. The man with the axe asks the tree
whether it will yield a good crop next year and threatens to cut it
down if it does not. To this the man among the branches replies on
behalf of the tree that it will bear abundantly.


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