services, but the fact that he knows "the stories of the first times"
makes him a welcome addition to the company and gives him an enviable
position in the estimation of his fellows.

The purely ritualistic tales, called _diams_, are learned word
by word by the mediums, [1] as a part of their training for their
positions, and are only recited while an animal is being stroked with
oil preparatory to its being sacrificed, or when some other gift is
about to be presented to the superior beings. The writer has recorded
these _diams_ from various mediums in widely separated towns and has
found them quite uniform in text and content. The explanatory tales
were likewise secured from the mediums, or from old men and women who
"know the customs." The stories of the last division are the most
frequently heard and, as already indicated, are told by all. It is
evident even to the casual reader that these show much more evidence
of outside influence than do the others; some, indeed, appear to have
been recently borrowed from the neighboring christianized Ilocano. [2]


Tales of the Mythical Period

_Reconstruction of the Culture_.--In the first division certain
actors occur with great frequency, while others always take the
leading parts. These latter appear under a variety of names, two or
more titles often being used for the same individual in a single
tale. To avoid confusion a list of the fourteen principal actors
and their relationships are given in the accompanying table. It will
appear that there are some conflicts in the use of names, but when it
is realized that the first twenty-six myths which make up the cycle
proper were secured from six story tellers coming from four different