Tinguian potters at work
Seeding and combing cotton
“We are going home now; it is not good for us to stay here, for we cannot sit among the people.”
When they started home Ligi followed them until they came to the bana-asi tree, and here he saw them take off their feathers and put them in the rice granary. Then suddenly they became one beautiful maiden.
“Are you not the tikgi who came to cut my rice?” asked Ligi. “You look to me like a beautiful maiden.”
“Yes,” she replied; “I became tikgi and cut rice for you, for otherwise you would not have found me.” Ligi took her back to his house where the people were making the ceremony, and as soon as they saw her they began chewing the magic betel-nuts to find who she might be.
The quid[67] of Ebang and her husband and that of the tikgi went together, so they knew that she was their daughter who had disappeared from their house one day long ago while they were in the fields. In answer to their many questions, she told them that she had been in the bana-asi tree, where Kaboniyan[68] had carried her, until the day that she changed herself into the tikgi birds and went to the field of Ligi.
Ligi was very fond of the beautiful girl and he asked her parents if he might marry her. They were very willing and decided on a price he should pay. After the wedding all the people remained at his house, feasting and dancing for three months.