BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 117 



Ceremony of Pamalugu, or purification. The Pamalugu, or 



ceremonial washing- in the river, takes place on the third day of 

 Ginum - - the day preceding- that on which the culminating rites occur. 



The time set for going down to the river was an hour after 

 sunrise, or thereabouts, but it was considerably later eight 



o'clock or eight-thirty — when the party started from the house. 

 During the wait, the men beat agongs and chewed betel as usual, 

 while the girls sewed and embroidered on festival garments that 

 were yet unfinished. The sun, showing dimly from behind masses 

 of clouds, was more than two hours high when the priestess, Singan, 

 came in from the woods where she had been gathering the various 

 kinds of plant-medicines required for the ceremonial. She carried 

 a large bundle of small green plants, freshly cut, together with 

 bunches and sprays plucked from large vegetable growths and from 

 certain trees, all of which green things she had laid in a piece of 

 sheath torn from the areca-palm, a material which forms the regular 

 wrapping-paper of the wild tribes. 



Here are the native names of a number of the varities of plants 

 in Singan's bundle: bagebg, sarabak, dalinding, tarinagum, maga- 

 budbud, uwag, lambingbaying, badbad, uliuli : manangid, balintudug, 

 liurihtil. Jcapalili, bowing. I97 Singan divided the green bouquet into 

 two equal parts, carefully placing upon another piece of areca-palm 

 sheath one spray or plant of each kind. When she finished, she 

 had two green piles of fairly uniform size, which she made into 

 two bunches and tied with a strong, fibrous string of areca. One 

 of the boys tore oif the narrow strips from a section of sheath, 

 and handed them to Singan as she needed them. 



One element of the collection of greens was kept apart from the 

 rest a single branch of areca palm that had just burst from its 

 enveloping sheath at the top of the trunk, and was full of clusters 

 of tiny white blossoms and pale green sprays of undeveloped leaves. 

 This branch, called bagebe, 10s Singan preserved almost intact, only 

 breaking off' one or two little sprays to add to the two bunches 

 already made up. 



197 An extensive list of the various leaves used to make up the medicinal bouquet with 

 which the rice-paste (Tepong Tawar) is applied, is given in Skeat: op. cit., pp. 77 — 80. 



198 Bayebe is the word for the flowers and leaf-buds of the areca palm in the earliest 

 stages of development. The blossoms just forming, are pure white, and the leaf-buds range 

 from white to pale green at the moment of the bursting of the enveloping sheath. The 

 same name is sometimes applied to this flowering axis when mature. 



