again a dozen times, and after the bird
is dead. The head receives a few sharp blows, a jet of blood spurts
out, and the ceremonial killing is past. The man, still sitting on
his haunches, still clasping the feet of the pendent bird, moves
over beside his fire, faces his dwelling, and voices the only words
of this strangely cruel scene. His eyes are open, his head unbending,
and he gazes before him as he earnestly asks a blessing on the people,
their pigs, chickens, and crops.

The old men say it is bad to cut off a chicken's head -- it is like
taking a human head, and, besides, they say that the pummeling makes
the flesh on the bony wings and neck larger and more abundant --
so all fowls killed are beaten to death.

After the oral part of the ceremony the fowl is held in the flames
till all its feathers are burned off. It is cut up and cooked in the
olla before the door of the dwelling, and the entire family eats of it.

Each family has the Mang'-mang ceremony, and so also has each
broken household if it possesses a sementera -- though a lone woman
calls in a man, who alone may perform the rite connected with the
ceremonial killing, and who must cook the fowl. A lone man needs no
woman assistant.

Though the ancestral anito are religiously bidden to the feast,
the people eat it all, no part being sacrificed for these invisible
guests. Even the small olla of basi is drunk by the man at the
beginning of the meal.

The rite of the third day is called "Mang-a-pu'-i." The sementeras of
growing palay are visited, and an abundant fruitage asked for. Early
in the morning some member of each household goes to the mountains
to get small sprigs of a plant named "pa-lo'-ki." Even as early as
7.30 the pa-lo'-ki had been brought to many of the houses, and the
people were scattering along the different trails leading to the
most distant sementeras. If the family owned many scattered fields,
the day was well spent before all were visited.

Men, women, and boys went to the bright-green fields of young palay,
each carrying the basket belonging to his sex. In the basket were
the sprigs of pa-lo'-ki, a small olla of water, a small wooden dish
or a basket of cooked rice, and a bamboo tube of basi or tapui. Many
persons had also several small pieces of pork and a chicken. As they
passed out of the pueblo each carried a tightly bound club-like torch
of burning palay straw; this would smolder slowly for hours.

On the stone dike of e