The white lie that made a marriage: Ensiong’s tale of woo (Travelogue Day 8)

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By Marlynda Meraw

SIBU, Feb 25: Some stories begin with grand journeys or historic battles. Others begin with something far smaller, almost harmless. One such story began with a white lie, told not to deceive, but to win a heart.

Former Penghulu Kampung Nangka, Sahari Ubu, shared the legend of Ensiong, recounting it as it had been passed down through generations.

His telling began with Tugau, a figure many Melanau Seduan believe to have been either a king or a great warrior, and a father determined to test those who sought his daughter’s hand.

When Tugau’s daughter, Dayang came of age, suitors arrived seeking her hand. Tugau, however, set an impossible condition.

“He told the suitors that whoever could chop a tree and build a boat within a single day would be allowed to marry his daughter,” Sahari told the D’Drift team.

The challenge was never meant to be won. Yet Ensiong, also known as Siong, refused to walk away. Perhaps, Sahari reflected, Tugau was not seeking strength alone but ingenuity.

Knowing the chief rarely left the longhouse, Ensiong devised a plan. He gathered a large tree trunk at Pasai Siong and worked on the boat far from watchful eyes. Whenever villagers asked about his progress, he would simply reply, “No, I am still searching for a suitable tree.”

In truth, the work had already begun.

After a month of hidden labour, Ensiong announced that he was ready to attempt the challenge. Surely enough, he returned with a completed boat, fulfilling Tugau’s condition in spirit if not in strict form. From that small deception came a marriage, proving that wit sometimes succeeds where brute effort fails.

“That was how Ensiong married Dayang,” Sahari said. “From a white lie.”

The union of heaven and sea

As the conversation with Sahari continued, Tugau’s story unfolded in layers, revealing a narrative deeply embedded in Melanau Seduan oral tradition.

In ancient times, three beings were believed to have descended from the kayangan, or heavens, with their origins linked to distant lands now known as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sarawak.

Their arrival gave rise to many stories, including one that began in the forest, where a couple stumbled upon a large egg, and from it emerged a child

“In today’s world, people might say the egg was a spaceship. If it came from above, that is how we would explain it now,” Sahari smiled as he reflected on the story.

Childless, the couple adopted the boy and named him Tugau. As he grew, he stood apart from others. He was taller, stronger, and wiser, and legend claimed that even his burp could be heard from sixty kilometres away.

With Tugau’s existence, Sahari believed that the boy was sent to help the people who lived below.

“People from then faced hardship. Paddy would not grow, and survival was difficult. Perhaps Tugau was sent from the heavens to help them.”

When Tugau reached adulthood, he married Retus, the daughter of the king of the iyang (underwater) of the aquatic realm believed to exist beneath the human world. In his telling, Sahari added that in Melanau cosmology, existence was divided into three domains: the kayangan above, the tanah (earth) where humans live, and the iyang.

Retus demanded an extraordinary dowry, including baskets of gold which Tugau’s adoptive parents worried about how ordinary people could fulfil such requests, yet Tugau remained calm.

“On the wedding day, he delivered every demand Retus made,” said Sahari.

After their union, prosperity followed. Tugau built remarkable structures, cultivated successful paddy fields, and established a thriving community wherever he went.

Listening to Sahari, the story seemed less concerned with myth itself than with the idea of balance, a reminder that survival once depended on harmony between the realms above, below, and all around.

The boar princess

Another tale tied to Tugau and Ensiong tells of hardship brought by nature itself.

At one point in time, Sahari said that the villagers once struggled to harvest paddy because wild boars repeatedly destroyed their crops. Among them roamed a white boar said to be invincible.

“No weapon could harm it,” Sahari said. “It was considered the big boss among the boars.”

Determined to end the destruction, Ensiong secretly borrowed Tugau’s hoe and waited. When the white boar appeared, he struck, embedding the blade into its body. Knowing he could face severe punishment for losing the tool, he pursued the animal for two days and two nights until it leapt into a mysterious pond.

Without hesitation, Ensiong followed. On emerging into another world, the white boar transformed into a young woman, revealed to be the daughter of the boar king.

Though the blade could no longer be seen, the princess grew weak and unwell. Alarmed for his daughter’s life, the boar king proclaimed that whoever could cure her would marry her.

Warriors of the like came forward one after another, yet none succeeded.

“But Ensiong knew the truth,” Sahari said. Requesting a bamboo tube and privacy, he removed the hidden blade and concealed it. The princess recovered, and true to the promise, Ensiong married her.

When the enkabang fruit season arrived, the boar kingdom departed to forage. Pretending to be unwell, Ensiong remained behind, retrieved the hidden blade, and went home. Upon his return, he reminded the people never to harm the white boar again.

Having listened to Sahari, the tale of the boar princess felt less like a victory story and more like a reminder that coexistence between worlds depends not on power, but on knowing when to live in harmony.

The sibau that named Sibu

Turning from legend to place, the D’Drift team was regaled with the story of how Sibu itself received its name.

“Sibu was named after the sibau fruit,” said Sahari. “It looks like rambutan, but it is sour. Because the fruit grew abundantly here, people called the place Sibau, which later became Sibu.”

The story of the land, however, is not only told through fruit. Bukit Aup, a small hill nearby, carries its own tales. Like many hills, it is said to have a penjaga (spiritual caretaker) watching over the place.

In this case, a lady named Dayang Tri Gulai, with Gulai meaning “alone” resided there. Long ago, Bukit Aup had a cave at the site of the current pond. Sahari recounted that when local aristocrats died, the cave would make noises, and its entrance would close.

Sahari said the cave itself no longer exists, having been quarried during the British colonial period. The pond that remains, however, still holds the memory of Dayang Tri Gulai.

It was said she would bathe there, and the Melanau people would come with wishes (berniat), asking for blessings.

“Married couples often visited, seeking children or guidance from the spirits,” he said.

Though today home to many communities and cultures, Sibu was once the domain of the Melanau, its earliest inhabitants long before modern development reshaped the town.

For the D’Drift team, Sibu was never an unfamiliar destination. It is a town many Sarawakians pass through repeatedly, often associated with simple comforts: kampua noodles, freshly baked kompia, and the relaxing pace of a river town.

Yet familiarity has a way of disguising depth.

Our journey from Miri had been long, shaped by hours on the road and the quiet exhaustion that follows travel. Still, each stop revealed something unexpected. Conversations unfolded into histories, and histories into legends, reminding us that places are rarely exhausted by a single visit.

Sibu, it turns out, is not defined only by its food or streets but by voices like Sahari’s, carrying stories that blur the boundary between myth and lived memory. Here, storytelling is not nostalgia but continuity, a way of understanding how people once explained the world and how those explanations still shape identity today.

Perhaps that is the true reward of travel. Not discovering somewhere entirely new, but learning to see the familiar with deeper attention. – DayakDaily

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