TABOOS
For a period of a week, more or less, the mother must refrain from the use of all food except the following: The core of the wild palm tree, native rice, fresh fish, and chicken. The chicken must be of a certain color; in the lake region of the Agúsan Valley it must be either black or white, and the leg must be dark in color.
Bathing is interdicted for two or three days according to the custom of the locality.
After bathing, the new mother and her husband leave the house in order that the little one may have good luck, and also that they themselves may be removed from the malign influence of the malevolent spirits that are inevitably present on the occasion of a birth.
The birth festivity is not a very solemn nor magnificent affair. The midwife and a few friends, perhaps a dozen in all, are invited. It is at the end of this repast that some little remuneration is made to the midwife and to the priestess for their services. Among the pagan Manóbos there seems to be no fixed rule as to the amount to be given to the midwife, but among the conquistas or Christianized tribes, there prevails the customary price of P1.50 for the first birth, P1.00 for the second, and P0.50 for the third and all successive ones.
THE BIRTH CEREMONY22
22Tag-un-ún to bá-ta.
When the child is born it is supposed not yet to have received the two spirit companions23 that are to accompany it during its earthly pilgrimage. Whence proceed these spirit-companions, or what is their nature, I have not been able to learn to my satisfaction. Mandáit, the tutelary god of the little ones, after being invoked and appeased with offerings, is supposed to select two spirit companions out of the multitudinous beings that hover over human haunts. These spirits then become guardians, as it were, of the child, and do not separate themselves from him till one of them becomes the prey of some foul demon.
23Um-a-gád, from á-gad, to accompany.