Ceremonials
A residence of five months among a primitive people about whom no scientific knowledge existed previously is evidently so scant for a study of ceremonial life that no explanation should be necessary here. However, I wish to say that no claim is made that the following short presentation is complete—in fact, I know of several ceremonies by name about which I can not speak at all with certainty. Time was also insufficient to get accurate translations of all ceremonial utterances which are here presented.
There is great absence of formalism in uttering ceremonies, scarcely two persons speak exactly the same words, though I believe the purport of each ceremony, as uttered by two people, to be the same. This looseness may be due in part to the absence of a developed cult having the ceremonies in charge from generation to generation.
Ceremonies connected with agriculture
Pochang
This ceremony is performed at the close of the period Pa-chog′, the period when rice seed is put in the germinating beds.
It is claimed there is no special oral ceremony for Po-chang′. The proceeding is as follows: On the first day after the completion of the period Pa-chog′ the regular monthly Pa′-tay ceremony is held. On the second day the men of ato Sigichan, in which ato Lumawig resided when he lived in Bontoc, prepare a bunch of runo as large around as a man’s thigh. They call this the “cha-nûg′,” and store it away in the ato fawi, and outside the fawi set up in the earth twenty or more runo, called “pa-chi”′-pad—the pûd-pûd′ of the harvest field.