PROBABLY, it was to the musang that old Pampangan folks referred when, during the 1940’s, they mentioned the pusa lampung (cat from Lampong) to crying children to threaten them: “You better stop your tantrums, or the cat from Lampong will come and get you.” (Eka tuknang? Oyan na ing pusa lampong, sigi).
Lampong is the name of an ethnic group and of a region in Sumatra. (Marsden ibid.: 295). There is no such group in Pampanga, and yet the word has found its way into the language. Aside from the phrase referred to in the preceding paragraph, there is the verb maglampung, which means the act by which a male cat and a female cat cry together, usually at night, reportedly as an integral part of mating between the two animals. The word is sometimes applied, derogatorily, to human beings. When a person, especially a female, is having a sexual affair under circumstances comdemned by decent society, he or she is said to be makipaglampungan.
Here, below, in one synoptic shot, are more words belonging to the five languages spoken in eighteenth-century Sumatra (Malay, Achin, Batta, Rejang and Lampong) (Ibid.: 203) akin to present day Pampangan:
