128 THE MANOBOS OF MINDANAO— GARVAN 



The secular and social part of the feast in no wise differ from any other celebration, except 

 that those who buried the deceased have marked attention paid them. There are the same mot- 

 ley group of primitive men and women, the same impartial distribution of the food, the same 

 wild shouts of merriment, the same rivalry to finish each one his allotted portion, the same gen- 

 erous reciprocation of food and drink, and, finally, the same condition of inebriation that on 

 many such occasions has abruptly terminated the feast by a fatal quarrel. 42 



The rest of the day, and probably a goodly portion of the night, are spent in dancing to the 

 tattooing of the drum and the clanging of the gong, interrupted at times by long tribal chants of 

 the priests and others versed in chronicles of Manoboland. 



If the death revels continue more than one day, the second day is a repetition of the first 

 with the exception that only the betel-nut offering is made to the dead. As the celebration of 

 this mortuary feast is the termination of the anxious period of mourning, and the release from the 

 subtle secret importunateness of the dead, everybody with his wife and children flocks to the 

 scene. No relative of the departed one may be absent for that would leave him still exposed to 

 the strange waywardness of the envious dead. 



o An instance of a killing hud taken place a short time before my visit in 1909 to the Manobos of the Binungngaau River, upper Agusan. 



