BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEBEMOXIAL. MAGIC AXD MYTH 33 



section of a banana-trunk, to deceive the friends, and goes off, riding 

 on the corpse. 



Certain species of forest trees are traditionally haunted by demons, 

 particularly the baliti, ' 2 the mararag, ' 3 the pananag, the barayung, 

 the magbok, and the lanaon u — all of which are mentioned in 

 folklore and myth as sacred to Buso. In general, too, any individ- 

 ual tree 75 having spreading branches and heavy, straggling roots 

 protruding above the surface of the earth is associated with the 

 possible home of a buso, and is pointed out, fearfully, as an object 

 to be avoided after dark. Throughout the island tribes, indeed, a 

 tree of such appearance is almost universally held to be haunted. 



Both mythology and current folklore represent the number of 

 individual buso as practically unlimited ; they people the air and 

 the mountains and the forests by myriads ; their number is legion. '° 



7 - Spelled by some writers as balete ; the form baliti is here adopted as a matter of 

 uniformity with other Malay words throughout this paper. The tree is a species of Ficus, 

 and is very generally associated with spirit habitation , in the beliefs of the Filipino as 

 well as of the wild tribes. It is a tall tree, with large branches, dark-green leaves — long, 

 narrow, firm-textured and glossy — and with roots that grow out from the trunk for 

 some distance above the ground. Sawyer observes that the baliti corresponds to our 

 witch elm. Cf. The Inhabitants of the Philippines, p. 343. 1900. Cf. also Chirino's 

 observations on the baliti. Blair and Robertson : op. cit., vol. 12, p. 214; and footnote. 1904. 



' 3 The Bagobo word for yellow. 



74 Presumably the tree called, variously, linan, lanaon, lauan, lauaan, and identified by 

 Foreman and by Blair and Robertson as Dipterocarpus thurifera; it is characterized by 

 wood that is reddish-white or ash-colored with brown spots and is light in weight, and by 

 its yield of fragant white resin that is used for incense. Cf. J. Foreman : The Philippine 

 Islands, 2 ed., p 370. 1899. Cf. also, Blair and Robertson : op. cit., vol. 18, p. 171. 1904. 



75 Cf. "Bagobo myths/' Jour. Am. Folk-lore, vol. 26, pp. 44, 49, 50. 1913. Skeat 

 says that the peninsular Malays associate the hantus, or spirits of evil, with particular 

 trees which they suppose these spirits to frequent after dark. Cf. Malay magic, pp. 

 64 — 65. 1900. For similar traditions in the southern islands, cf. Blumentritt's discus- 

 sion of sacred trees in Sumatra, Nias, Java, Borneo, Celebes, Burn, etc., in Diccionario 

 mitologico, pp. 29 — 31. 1895. The ancient Tagal and Visayan believed that the spirits 

 of ancestors, called nono or nonok, resided in the baliti and in certain other trees, all of 

 which, by a figure of speech, were similarly named nono. For a treatment of this subject, 

 see the extract from Tomas Ortiz: "Practica del ministerio." Blair and Robertson: 

 op. cit., vol. 43, pp. 104 — 105. 1906. Among the Bagobo, I have not heard the grand- 

 father, or nono, conception mentioned. With them, it is the buso that haunt the trees; 

 and, although the bad ghost is a kind of buso, this is not the ancestral spirit idea. 



76 Here, again the Bagobo Follows the great body of Malay tradition. Cf. the dis- 

 cussion of the hantu among pagan tribes of the peninsula, as given by Stevens, and by 

 Martin, who says". "Wenn Stevens schreiht: 'Jeder Baum hat seine besondere Art Han- 

 tu's,' und wenn er ferner von Hantu redet, die 'durch Regen, durch Hitze, in Bergen, 

 Seen, Steinen, Biiumen, u. s. w.' wirken, so kommt dies einer Beseelung der Ganzen Na- 

 tur gleich . . ." "Die Mehrzahl dieser letztgenannten Hantu scheint nicht spezialisiert zu 



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