g, woven bark-fiber blankets are made which
sometimes come to Bontoc.

Before a girl puts on her lu-fid', or woven bark-fiber skirt, at
about 8 or 10 years of age, she at times wears simply the narrow
girdle, later worn to hold up the skirt. The skirt is both short and
narrow. It usually extends from below the navel to near the knees. It
opens on the side, and is frequently so scant and narrow that one leg
is exposed as the person walks, the only part of the body covered on
that side being under the girdle, or wa'-kis -- a woven band about 4
inches wide passing twice around the body (see Pl. XXIII). The women
sometimes wear the braided-string bejuco belt, i-kit', worn by the men.

The lu-fid' and the wa'-kis are the extent of woman's ordinary
clothing. For some months after the mother gives birth to a child
she wears an extra wa'-kis wrapped tightly about her, over which the
skirt is worn as usual. During the last few weeks of pregnancy the
woman may leave off her skirt entirely, wearing simply her blanket
over one shoulder and about her body. Women wear breechcloths during
the three or four days of menstruation.

During the period when the water-soaked soil of the sementera is turned
for transplanting palay the women engaged in such labor generally lay
aside their skirts. Sometimes they retain a girdle and tuck an apron of
camote leaves or of weeds under it before and behind. I have frequently
come upon women entirely naked climbing up and down the steep, stone
dikes of their sementeras while weeding them, and also at the clay
pits where Samoki women get their earth for making pottery. In May,
1903, it rained hard every afternoon for two or three hours in Bontoc
pueblo, and at such times the women out of doors uniformly removed
their clothing. They worked in the fields and went from the fields
to their dwellings nude, wearing on their heads while in the trail
either their long, basket rain protector or a head covering of camote
vines, under which reposed their skirts in an effort to keep them
dry. Sometimes while passing our house en route from the field to the
pueblo the women wore the girdle with the camote-vine apron, called
pay-pay. Often no girdle was worn, but the women held a small bunch
of leaves against the body in lieu of an attached apron. Sometimes,
however, their hands were occupied with their burdens, and their
nudity seemed not to trouble them in the least. The women remove their
skirts, they say, bec