Whereas, so far as known, the o′-lâg occurs with the Igorot only among the Bontoc culture group, yet the above quotations and references point to a similar institution among distant people—among some of the same people who have an institution very similar to the pabafunan and fawi.
Afong
A′-fong is the general name for Bontoc dwellings, of which there are two kinds. The first is the fay′-ü ([Pls. XXXIV] and [XXXVI]), the large, open, board dwelling, some 12 by 15 feet square, with side walls only 3½ feet high, and having a tall, top-heavy grass roof. It is the home of the prosperous. The other is the kat-yu′-fong ([Pl. XXXVII]), the smaller, closed, frequently mud-walled dwelling of poor families, and commonly of the widows.
The family dwelling primarily serves two purposes—it is the place where the man, his wife, and small child sleep, and where the entire family takes its food.
The fay′-ü is built at considerable expense. Three or four men are required for a period of about two months to get out the pine boards and timbers in the forest. Each piece of timber for any permanent building is completed at the time it is cut from the tree, and is left to season in the mountains; sometimes it remains several years. (See [Pl. XXXV].) When all is ready to construct the dwelling the owner announces his intention. Some 200 men of the pueblo gather to erect the building, and two or three dozen women come to prepare and cook the necessary food, for, whereas no wage is paid the laborers, all are feasted at the cost of much rice and several hogs and a carabao or two. The toiling and feasting continue about ten days.
The following description of a fay′-ü is of an ordinary dwelling in Bontoc pueblo: The fay′-ü are all constructed on the same plan, though a few are larger than the one here described, and some few are smaller. The front and back walls of the house are 3 feet 6 inches high and 12 feet 6 inches long. The two side walls are the same height as the ends, but are 15 feet 6 inches long. The rear wall is built of stones carefully chinked with mud. The side walls consist each of two boards extending the full length of the structure. The front wall is cut near the middle from top to bottom with a doorway 1 foot 4 inches wide; otherwise the front wall is like the two side walls, except that it has a roughly triangular timber grooved along the lower side and fitted over the top board as a cap. The doorposts are two timbers sunk in the ground; their tops fit into the two “caps,” and each has a groove from top to bottom into which the ends of the boards of the front wall are inserted. A few dwellings have a door consisting of a single board set on end and swinging on a projection sunk in a hole in a doorsill buried in the earth; the upper part of the door swings on a string secured to the doorpost and passing through a hole in the door.
At each of the four corners of the building, immediately inside the walls, is a post set in the ground and standing 6 feet 9 inches high. The boards of the walls are tied to these corner posts, and the greater part of the weight of the roof rests on their tops. Four other posts, also planted in the ground and about as high as the corner posts, stand about 4 feet inside the walls of the house equidistant from the corner post and marking the corners of a rectangle about 5½ feet square. They directly support the second story of the building.
There is no floor except the earth in the first story of the Bontoc dwelling, and from the door at the front of the building to the two rear posts of the four central ones there is an unobstructed passage or aisle called “cha-la′-nan.” At one’s left, as he enters the door, is a small room called “chap-an′” 5½ feet square separated from the aisle by a row of low stones partially sunk in the earth. The earth in this room is excavated so that the floor is about 1 foot lower than that of the remainder of the building, and in its center the peculiar double wooden rice mortar is imbedded in the earth. It is in the chap-an′ that the family rice and millet is threshed. At the left of the aisle and immediately beyond the chap-an′, separated from it by a board partition the same height as the outside walls of the house, is the cooking room, called “cha-le-ka-nan′ si mo-o′-to.” It is approximately the same size as the threshing room. There are neither boards nor stones to cut this cooking room off from the open aisle of the house, but its width is determined by a low pile of stones built along its farther side from the outer house wall toward the aisle and ending at the rear left post of the four central ones. In the face of this stone wall are three concavities—fireplaces over which cooking pots are placed. Arranged along the outer wall, and about 2 feet high, is a board shelf on which the water jars are kept.
At the right of the aisle, as one enters the building, is a broad shelf about 12 feet long; in width it extends from the side wall to the two right central posts. On this shelf, called “chûk′-so,” are placed the various baskets and other utensils and implements of everyday use. Beneath it are stored the small cages or coops in which the chickens sleep at night. There are a few fay′-ü in Bontoc in which the threshing room and cooking room are on the right of the aisle and the long bench is on the left, but they are very rare exceptions.