Original subtitles

Specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.

For this Collection, Sir David Attenborough has chosen documentaries

from the start of his career.

More programmes on this theme and other BBC Four Collections

are available on BBC iPlayer.

SOLO WHISTLE

OTHER MUSICIANS JOIN IN

We filmed those... flute orchestra in Bali

and it's a very appropriate thing to see at the beginning of any programme

about Bali because the Balinese are obsessed by music.

Those people were just ordinary villagers.

They had made the flutes themselves.

The music was of their own composition

and they rehearsed every night in the village near where we were staying.

I was looking forward very much to seeing the music

and the dancers of Bali, but we were also there looking for animals.

Of course, Bali is a very cultivated country.

There's not much jungle left there, so we couldn't expect to find

anything dramatic, like orang-utans or elephants,

but we hoped we might find some of the more interesting smaller animals

like ants and lizards.

Bali is covered by a network of good roads

and you can see quite a lot of things if you just stick in a car.

But to see the Bali that is the true Bali, the untouched Bali,

then the only thing to do is to get out of your car

and start walking through the countryside

along the avenues of palm trees which lead to most villages.

Past the rice fields which spread in terraces up the hillsides

in what I suppose is one of the most beautiful tropical landscapes

in the world.

We took with us three Balinese villagers,

who were carrying our recording equipment and our film cameras.

These are groves of bamboo.

CHILDREN CHATTER

And so, after several hours walking through the rice fields,

we at last reached a small Balinese village.

We were now well away from the beaten track.

Few visitors ever come here

and a European face was the object of a good deal of curiosity.

Along the village street in front of us waddled an extraordinary pig.

Its slumped backbone and sagging belly

are not the results of a disease or an accident

but are the normal characteristics of this monstrous breed,

which is found nowhere else but in Bali.

All along the roadside, men sat

caressing their fighting cocks

and matching them with possible opponents in preparation

for a future cockfighting festival.

Cockfighting is not merely a sport for gambling,

although, in fact, the Balinese do bet extremely heavily on the fights,

but it is also a necessity,

for during many religious ceremonies, the Balinese gods require that

warm blood should be spilt on the ground to appease them.

Apart from enjoying cockfights,

the Balinese also, rather oddly to my mind,

derive pleasure from watching fighting crickets

which are made to perform in these little pits.

And to make them fight, their owners irritate them by flicking them

with a quill of a feather.

But we were really looking for wild animals

and, not far from the village,

we discovered this charming little creature trundling through the grass.

It is a pangolin or scaly anteater.

As he climbed the tree, we saw that he was feeding.

His long, sticky tongue flickering over the branches,

gathering the ants which swarmed everywhere.

Not a particularly pleasant meal one would have thought,

but at least his hard, scaly coat

protects him from the worst of the stings.

Without a regular daily supply of live ants, the pangolin can't live.

We couldn't hope to provide him

with the right sort of ants in London,

so we didn't try to catch him, but just sat quietly

and watched him as he continued undisturbed with his morning meal.

We noticed that the ants on which the pangolin was feeding had constructed

nests for themselves by fastening together clusters of leaves.

There seemed to be a great deal of activity

going on around these nests, so we looked closer.

At first, we couldn't distinguish exactly what the ants

were doing as they bustled about so busily.

However...

..then we noticed this group,

with their jaws locked tight in the lower leaf,

and their hind legs attached to the upper leaf.

The colony is constructing a new nest.

And these patient workers are holding two leaves

of the future nest in position

so that other members can fasten them together

to form the outer wall of their new home.

They remained in this tense position for a very long time

and I wondered who would relieve them

and how the leaves would be fastened together.

But help is coming.

Other workers are arriving from...nearby nest, some of them

carrying in their jaws little white ant grubs.

They bring these to their valiant colleagues,

still patiently holding those two leaves together.

Once again, at first,

we didn't understand what they were doing with these grubs.

But soon it became clear.

The larvae are being gently squeezed by the workers' jaws

so that they produce thin strands of silky material

in the same way as a spider does when she builds her web.

The worker, in fact,

is using its offspring in its jaws just like a tube of glue,

moving it to and fro across the gap between the leaves

and weaving a fabric of gossamer

which will unite the leaves to form the nest wall.

Sometimes, as here, it seems to be guiding

and adjusting the sticky thread with its antennae.

Meanwhile, other workers stand on guard

to prevent any insect intruders from approaching

until the colony's nest is complete.

There are several ants with their tubes of glue

working on this section. One toils away on the outside

and there are at least three or four working on the inside of the nest,

just visible through the silky fabric which they're weaving.

Soon, the nest will be complete.

But there was yet another interesting creature to be seen in that tree.

Our attention had been drawn to a yellow spasmodic flash

high up in one of the nearby branches.

It was a little lizard, about six inches long,

thrusting forward his long yellow dewlap to warn any other lizard

in the neighbourhood that this part of the tree is his territory.

And we soon saw that he was no ordinary lizard, either,

for, apart from his dewlap,

his ribs were extended into a fan of skin on either side of his body.

This is one of his females, who has a smaller, blue dewlap.

As the two of them scuttled about the tree,

the male expanded his wings,

richly patterned with blue and black, and showed them off to the female.

But the main purpose of these wings is to enable the little lizard

to glide through the air from branch to branch,

sometimes catching tiny insects on the way.

They can, in fact, glide for distances of as long as 60 feet

before they alight nimbly on all fours on the trunk.

Lizards of all sorts were very common around the village

and one of the commonest,

and, in many ways, the loveliest, I saw in this small tree.

It is a tokay gecko.

He's quite a big creature, about nine inches long,

and brilliantly coloured in orange and red,

and with the reputation of having a very severe bite.

And just to see whether he had a bite or not, I tried him with this twig.

And here he is in the studio.

He, er...

You may be able to see that his eyes have a vertical pupil

just like a cat's.

And that's a very good comparison because, like a cat,

he is a nocturnal animal

and that shaped eye is very good for night vision.

He is about...

er...nine inches long.

Quite a big gecko, as geckos go.

And quite a fierce one. He lives on, um...

frogs...

mice, lizards, and even young birds.

He's called a tokay gecko because of his call.

It's a very typical call in Bali. You hear it every night.

"Tokay, tokay."

And, of course, the Balinese have got a legend

and a superstition about him.

It's very lucky to have a tokay gecko in your house.

In fact, it's a very bad thing if you DON'T have one.

And furthermore, every night, you listen for him

because the more "tokays" he makes, the luckier you are.

If he makes 12 or 13, you're really in luck.

If he makes only six, well, you'd better watch out.

You might like to have a look at his feet because he can walk on glass.

He is, perhaps, an answer to the old question of

how the fly lands on the ceiling because he runs about on the ceiling.

You often see him in the houses around the electric lights,

waiting for the cockroaches and the flies which are caught,

which are attracted by the lights.

And his feet are composed of a series of little plates.

It used to be thought that they were suction pads, but, in fact,

the latest research shows that they are not a suction,

but are covered with a multitude of tiny, fine hairs which clamp down

on whatever he's crawling over, and, so, enables him to stick on.

But I want to tell you something about the dance in Bali

and the music and the drama

because it is perhaps the most famous thing about Bali.

It's difficult for us to appreciate

just what and how much the dance and the drama means to the Balinese.

Every tiny little village has its own orchestra.

Every tiny little village has its own dance group.

The Balinese mind is obsessed by demons,

monsters and devils.

And to the Balinese, they're very real, they're part of this world,

they inhabit his village.

And in the dance dramas which we saw,

some of these animals and monsters appear.

One of them particularly is an animal called the Barong.

This is a great monster which lives in the temple,

or, as we would say,

at least his mask and his coat lives in the temple.

He has a little sacred store where he's kept.

And when the two dancers go into the temple to, um...

to make him move, they cease to become themselves.

And as they put on the mask, they, in fact, become the monster.

And very often they go into a trance.

The monster, to us, perhaps looks comic,

a bit like a pantomime horse.

It doesn't to the Balinese at all.

He can be comic, but he can also be tragic

and he can also be extremely savage.

He is one of the monsters which the Balinese in the village

have placated and which is now the protective guardian of that village.

And he is always in conflict with an evil witch called Rangda,

who lives in the graveyard, and who, as the Balinese said,

has...as a favourite plaything,

uses dead bodies of the villagers.

Not a pleasant creature at all.

In some of the dance dramas, there is a fight between these two monsters,

which is carried out often with the dancers in a state of trance.

One night, as we were sitting in the village, we heard the sound of gongs

and drums and cymbals - the gamelan - coming from the village temple

and we walked out to see what was happening.

GONGS, CYMBALS, DRUMS PLAY

These young girls are only eight years old

and they've been training to perform this beautiful temple dance,

the legong, since they were six.

They wear on their heads crowns of leather and gold leaf

decorated with the ivory-coloured blossoms of the frangipani tree.

One of the dancers has now been transformed into a sacred bird

and she comes down the steps from the temple

with her wings of gilded leather,

fluttering as she postures before the other dancers.

The legong is over and there is now a short interlude

with music from the gamelan orchestra.

Now begins the masked play.

A demon descends the temple steps.

He is joined by a king and his attendant dwarfs.

And now comes the superb Barong,

the mythical monster which lives in the temple

and is the guardian of the village and of its graveyard.

ROARING

But the Barong is taunted by an evil masked dwarf and a monkey.

ROARING

MAN SHOUTS

SHOUTING INTENSIFIES

GAMELAN MUSIC CRESCENDOES

This, for a moment, is comedy for the onlooking villagers,

but soon things will take a grimmer turn.

Now comes the Barong's main antagonist,

heralded by two attendants.

Rangda, the dreaded evil witch.

MUSICAL WAILING

The Barong approaches her and now begins the fight.

The men from the village, in a state of trance,

rush down from the temple,

waving their swords to attack Rangda and protect the Barong.

But Rangda, by her evil power, is able to hold them at bay.

Suddenly, with a flourish of her magic cloth,

she forces them to turn their daggers upon themselves.

The men, almost insensible,

try to thrust these sharp swords into their chests

but the Barong's power is stronger than Rangda's,

and he is able to protect his followers

so that their swords do not pierce the flesh and no blood is shed.

Now the priest comes from the temple

and scatters holy water to bring the men out of their trances.

WAILING

The men rush back into the temple.

The Barong disappears.

And all that is left are the mangy curs

eating the priest's offerings to the gods.

DOGS GROWL

I can offer no explanation for that extraordinary performance.

But one or two things I AM certain about.

First, those daggers were certainly very sharp -

I handled one afterwards.

Secondly, those men really were trying to force them

into their chests with all the strength at their command.

I could see their muscles trembling as they tried to do so.

And, thirdly, they were, without any doubt, in a state of trance.

Their eyeballs were staring, they moved in an extraordinary way.

In fact, they were so obviously in a state of trance

that as Charles Lagus and I skipped amongst them

trying to film and record that,

I was a little worried lest Rangda, the witch,

should decide to turn their swords on the BBC.

Well, two days after that dance, we had to leave Bali

and continue on the last leg of our trip to Komodo,

the island of the giant lizards, the dragons.

How we got there and what we found when we did get there,

I'll tell you about next week.

So, until then, good night.

MUSICIANS PLAY