The Bontoc Igorot by Albert Ernest Jenks
page 101 of 483 (20%)
page 101 of 483 (20%)
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things necessary, and have made good preparation for the burial. Do
not come to call away [to kill] any of your relatives or friends. Nowhere was there visible any sign of fear or awe or wonder. The women sitting about spun threads on their thighs for making skirts; they talked and laughed and sang at will. Mothers nursed their babes in the dwelling and under its projecting roof. Budding girls patted and loved and dimpled the cheeks of the squirming babes of more fortunate young women, and there was scarcely a child that passed in or out of the house, that did not have to steady itself by laying a hand on the lap of the corpse. All seemed to understand death. One, they say, does not die until the anito calls -- and then one always goes into a goodly life which the old men often see and tell about. In a well-organized and developed modern enterprise the death of a principal man causes little or no break. This is equally true in Igorot life. The former is so because of perfected organization -- there are new men trained for all machines; and the latter is true because of absence of organization -- there is almost no machinery to be left unattended by the falling of one person. On the third day the numbers increased. There were twenty-five or thirty men in the vicinity of the house, on the south side of which were half a dozen pots of basi,[21] from which men and boys drank at pleasure, though not half a dozen became intoxicated. Late in the afternoon a double row of men, the sons and sons-in-law of the deceased, lined up on their haunches facing one another, and for half an hour talked and laughed, counted on their fingers and gesticulated, diagrammed on their palms, questioned, pointed with their lips and nodded, as they divided the goodly property of the dead man. There |
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