Sigale Gale

 

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Sigale Gale puppet from Samosir

 

 

Sigale Gale dance puppets of Huta Bolon Simanindo Museum in Simanindo, Samosir Island, North Sumatra, Indonesia

 

 

Sigale Gale or Si Gale-Gale is a wooden puppet used in a funeral dance performance of the Batak people of Samosir Island, Northern Sumatra. Sigale Gale is a well known feature to visiting tourists. During the dance, the puppet is operated from behind like a marionette using strings that run through the ornate wooden platform on which it stands. The set up enables its arms and body to be moved and its head to turn.

Traditionally the performance was carried out of childless person. Batak Toba believe souls become an ancestral spirit and the children of the deceased perform funerary rites. If a person died childless a si gale-gale is created as a substitute. Complicated sigale gale could be life sized and featured actuation using wet moss or sponges that could be squeezed to make the dolls appear to cry.[1]

The wooden figure has jointed limbs were mounted on large wheeled platforms on which, weeping, they danced during funerary ceremonies called papurpur sepata, held for persons of high rank who had died without offspring. The ritual dispelled the curse of dying childless, and placated the spirit of the deceased so that he would do no harm to the community.[2]

There are a few versions of Sigale Gale in existence but the main one sits outside one of the many traditional Batak style houses in Tomok Village, Samosir Island.[citation needed]

 

Legend

The use of the si gale-gale figure is said to have originated from the legend of a childless woman named Nai Manggale, who on her deathbed instructed her husband to have a lifesize image made of herself to be called si gale-gale and to have a dirge played before it. Unless this was done, her spirit would not be admitted to the abode of the dead, which would in turn force her to put a curse on her surviving spouse. To avert this misfortune, the si gale-gale was created. Si gale-gale figures are either male or female, depending on the gender of the deceased