Problems with fontification in ruby mode

Hi! font-lock doesn't seem to work in ruby buffers. I've attached the file ruby-mode.el which is part of the ruby distribution. When I open a source file, I see Fontifying f.rb... aborted.aborted. in the message buffer. Also, the warning (1) (warning/warning) Error caught in `font-lock-pre-idle-hook': (malformed-list ?\') come up in tons. I don't know left from right with font-locking, so I can't figure out the problem to say nothing of its solution (might be some differences between emacs and xemacs, though). Any takers? TIA, norbert.