Mahsuri is a maiden of the island of Langkawi, famed for her beauty, who is falsely accused of adultery and condemned to death. At her execution the ordinary weapons will not harm her, and when at last she is stabbed she bleeds white blood, vindicating her innocence before all who watch. With her dying breath she curses Langkawi to seven generations of barrenness and misfortune. The island's subsequent decline and its devastation in the Siamese wars are popularly ascribed to her curse, which local tradition holds to have lifted only in the twentieth century.