I herewith lay my child upon thy breast,
My child, the darling of my heart,
With his full following of nurses and attendants,
And when the fifth moon wanes unto the sixth
I shall come to claim him back again.
Let him taste no harm or evil, great or small;
Here is thy reward.
The “upah,” or payment of the services of the spirit, is generally as follows:—
An egg, a bunch of betel-vine leaves, some “bras kunniet” (oryza glutinosa), some “bras bertik”[111] (i.e., the white pulp which exudes from rice grains when roasted), and a “ketupat,” or little woven basket of cocoa-nut leaves filled with rice.
After this invocation of Setia Guni loadfuls of rice are sprinkled on the ground, and the following invocation is then raised to the spirit of the air:—