Siri Kenali Kelantan 2: Lelaki Kelantan dari Perspektif Penjajah

"The bulk of the population is Malay, or rather that peculiar product of the fusion of Malay, Siamese and other races which in Kelantan passes for Malay. the Kelantan man is taller, better built and stronger than the true Malay. He is probably also of a temperament more easy-going, more open and less excitable than his cousins in the south. Gay, debonair,a good sportsman and a humorist, easily moved alike to brief anger and to affection, and endowed by nature with extraordinarily good manners, the man of Kelantan makes, as usual acquaintance, the best of good company, whether he be a Raja at a bull-fight or a peasant engaged as a jungle guide. Below the surface, however, he is natural born intriguer, and for that reason is also a slave to continual suspicion of the motives of his neighbours. He is consequently an inveterate liar; but his deceits are far from skilful and his soul is entirely free from shame whenever his prevarications are exposed. That the Malay is lazy and will not work is common saying in the mouths of Europeans in Malaya. True, the Malay will often decline to work in the particular manner in which the european desires him to do so, that is as a mining cooly or plantation hand in the service of the said European, but the Malay is by no means an idle person. In Kelantan he grows the seventy thousand odd tons of rice which feed the population, he catches and dries fish enough for home consumption and for considerable export, he makes some forty thousand pikuls of kopra every year, he works boats on the river, and, in fact, he makes a very comfortable living, supplies all his wants, and is contented. It is not probable that any European who condemns him would himself continue to work at tin mine or rubber estate after he had made enough to satisfy all his wants and to be able to realise all his ideals in order merely to satisfy the demand of some stranger for labour."

Taken from Kelantan : a state of the Malay peninsula - a handbook of information written by W.A. Graham published by Glasgow : Glasgow U. P., 1908.

Comments:
Gay in the extract means cheerful... hehe