The procedure is as follows: Late in the afternoon, all the necessary articles are brought to the house, then the mediums dance for a time to the music of the tongátong. Basi is served to the guests, and for an hour or more the spirits are summoned. Next morning the kalangan is built, and two pigs are sacrificed beside it. Their blood mixed with oil is offered to the spirits, and many acts, such as distributing the rice into ten dishes and then replacing it in the original container, the churning of sticks in the nose of a slaughtered animal and the like, are performed. Spirits are summoned in the afternoon, and in the evening da-eng is danced. On the third day new offerings are placed Page 343on the spirit shield and hanger; offerings are made at the new structure, numerous spirits appear, talk to and amuse the people, and finally da-eng is danced until late evening.
Following the ceremony, all members of the family are barred from work for about one month. They may not eat the meat of the wild carabao, wild hog, beef, eels, nor may they use peppers in their food. Wild fowl are barred for a period of one year.
Kalangan is much more widespread than either Tangpap or the Sayang ceremony, and this spirit structure is often found in villages, where the other great ceremonies are lacking.
Sayang.—The greatest of all the ceremonies is the Sayang, the ability to celebrate which proclaims the family as one of wealth and importance. In most cases the right is hereditary, but, as already indicated, a person may gain the privilege by giving, in order, and through a term of years, all the minor ceremonies. In such circumstances Sayang follows Kalangan after a lapse of from four to eight years. Otherwise the ceremony will be held about once in seven years, or when the spirit structure known as balaua is in need of repairs.
Originally this appears to have been a seventeen-day ceremony, as it still is in Manabo, Patok, Lagangilang, and neighboring villages, but in San Juan, Lagayan, Danglas, and some other settlements it now lasts only five or seven days. However, even in those towns where it occupies full time, the first twelve days are preliminary in nature.
On the first day, the mediums go to the family dwelling and take great pains to see that all forbidden articles are removed, for wild ginger, peppers, shrimps, carabao flesh, and wild pork are tabooed, both during the ceremony and for the month following. The next duty is to construct a woven bamboo frame known as talapitap on which the spirits are fed, and to prepare two sticks known as dakidak, one being a thin slender bamboo called bolo, the other a reed. These are split at one end, so they will rattle when struck on the ground, and thus call the attention of the spirit for whom food is placed on the rack.
That evening a fire is built in the yard, and beside it the mediums dance da-eng alone. Meanwhile a number of women gather in the yard and pound rice out of the straw. This pounding of rice continues each evening of the first five days. The first night they beat out ten bundles, the second, twenty, and so on, until they clean fifty on the fifth day.
Little occurs during the second and third days, but on these evenings the young men and girls join the mediums and dance da-eng by Page 344the fire in the yard. The fourth and fifth nights are known as gīnītbᴇt (“dark”), for then no fires are lighted, and the mediums dance alone. It is supposed that the black spirits, those who are deformed, or who are too shy to appear before the people, will come out at this time and enjoy the ceremony.
Beginning with the sixth day the women pound rice in the early morning. Starting with ten bundles, they increase the number by ten each day until on the thirteenth morning they pound out eighty bundles. A fire is lighted in the yard on the sixth day, and is kept burning continuously through the eighth, but the ninth and tenth are nights of darkness. When the fire is burning, it is a sign for all who wish, to come and dance, and each evening finds a jolly party of young people gathered in the yard, where they take part in the festivities, or watch the mediums, as they offer rice to the superior beings.
On the eleventh day, a long white blanket (tabing) is stretched across one corner of the room, making a private compartment for the use of visiting spirits. That evening, as it grows dark, a jar of basi is carried up into the house. All lights are extinguished both in the yard and the dwelling, so that the guests have to grope their way about. After the liquor is consumed, they go down into the yard, where, in darkness, they join the medium in dancing da-eng. The twelfth day is known as Pasa-ad—“the building.” During the preliminary days, the men have been bringing materials for use in constructing the great spirit-house called balaua, and on this morning the actual work is started. In form the balaua resembles the kalangan, but it is large enough to accommodate a dozen or more people, and the supporting posts are trunks of small trees (Plate [XXI]). After the framework is complete, one side of the roof is covered with cogon grass, but the other is left incomplete. Meanwhile the women gather near by and pound rice in the ceremonial manner described in the Pala-an ceremony (cf. p. 329).