Si Tanggang: The Ungrateful Son and the Curse of Stone

Long ago, a poor forest couple in Ulu Klang, in Selangor, had one son. In this old telling his name is Megat Sajobang, in a legend resembling the better-known Si Tanggang story.

When the boy grew up, he said to his mother, “Mother, find me a place on a boat. I want to go and see other lands.”

She did as he asked, and he sailed away from Ulu Klang. Ten or twelve years went by. He grew rich enough to buy a splendid ship, and he came home in it with his wife, who was expecting a baby, seven midwives and a guard with a drawn sword.

When his mother heard the news, she cooked a feast of forest meat, and she and his father paddled out in their bark canoe to meet him.

As they came near the great ship, they called out his name. But the son was ashamed of his parents’ poor clothes and simple canoe, and he told his men not to let them on board. His wife begged him to welcome them, no matter how humble they looked, but the ungrateful son still turned them away.

The old couple paddled back to shore and sat down and wept. Then the mother laid her hand on her heart and spoke.

“If you are truly my son, the child I fed and raised,” she said, “may you be turned to stone.”

As she walked away, the ship and everyone on it turned to stone.

The mother looked back one last time at her son, but the father did not. And by the power of God, the two of them were turned into pauh trees, a kind of wild mango. One tree leans toward the sea, and its fruit is sweet. The other leans toward the land, and its fruit is bitter.

The stone ship became a hill. At first it still held the ship’s plates and cups. Villagers borrowed them for feast days and forgot to give them back, until none were left.

About this story

This telling belongs to the family of ungrateful-son legends also associated with the names Si Tanggang and Malin Kundang; details and names differ between versions. This short version, called “Charitra Megat Sajobang,” was told by Malays in Selangor and written down in English by Walter William Skeat in Malay Magic (1900). Skeat’s record uses an old outsiders’ name for the Orang Asli, the first peoples of the Malay Peninsula; it is not used here, because many Orang Asli find it insulting.

Skeat’s account turns the ship into a hill without identifying it here with a modern visitor site. The two trees, one sweet and one bitter, are a distinctive detail of this telling.

Read the original: W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic (Project Gutenberg #47873)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: a family curse turns a ship and everyone aboard, including a pregnant woman, to stone.

The punishment reaches beyond the offender

The wife urges the son to welcome his parents, yet she is turned to stone with everyone else aboard. Her plea makes it difficult to read the ending as a simple account of each person receiving what they deserve. The parents’ own transformation extends the loss again: the mother’s backward glance preserves her attachment even after her anger has destroyed the reunion.

Who chooses, and who suffers?

List the son, wife, parents and ship’s attendants. Beside each, record their stated action and their fate. Whose punishment cannot be explained by anything they did in the story?

Talk about it

• Why was the son ashamed of his parents?
• What did his wife want him to do? Was she right?
• Why do you think one tree has sweet fruit and the other has bitter fruit?

Related stories

• The Widow’s Son — another tale of a son who leaves home to seek his fortune
• The Magic Peach — a folk tale about a child and the parents who love him
• The Lad Who Went to the North Wind — a boy who sets out from his mother’s home