SEA Folklore, a first and second look

My first research for books about SEA myths, legends and folklore was somewhat disappointing. Tons of travel guides are available and - fables. Okay, not bad. I read some dozen fables and they provided a nice little look, reminded me heavily of german folklore/Grimm's collections, though. You get no hares or wolves here, for sure. More like crocodiles and apes. No magic apples, magic lemons instead. You get your princess, queens, giants, hags - pretty much what you'd expect. I am not sure what I expected but it was not as awesome as I wished it to be.

There has to be more...

Gladly, the ever helpful Mun Kao pointed me to this litte gem of a book: Malay Magic by W. W. Skeat. Sadly, the Gutenberg-Link is blocked here in germany. Google seems to have the full text, as does archive.org, the ebook-export is somehow broken and compiling the plain text file results in an ugly layout. Amazon does have it, the cheap ebook-version seems to have layout-problems, too. Anyway, I downloaded the preview and liked what I read here. It seems to be the book about malay magic (as in MAGIC), so this is a no-brainer. The early 1900s tone make it a beautiful but somewhat tiring read for me as a non-native reader.

I'll read Skeat next, probably in small doses to avoid reading-fatigue... I'll report!