BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEBEMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 221 



charm at once, and begins to cry for her lover. Her passion for 

 him grows more vehement until she loses her mind, and goes into 

 the woods where she weeps continually. The only remedy now is 

 for the young man to give her another medicine, usually the liver 

 of a crow, to set her right. After this performance, her lover may 

 still want marry her, but in one case that came to my knowledge 

 a youth after giving a girl, first kabibi, and then ugka (crow's 

 liver) afterward married another girl. This same love charm may 

 be used by a woman upon a man. 



The coast Bagobo think that the mountain Bagobo put something 

 into the betel to make their visitors spit blood, and they have 

 a special charm tied in a small cloth to counteract the danger, 

 merely by its presence in one's bag. 



A magical virtue inherent in certain medicines operates to punish 

 a supposed thief at the same time with the discovery of his guilt. 

 This is the bongat, 352 a word which means trap. When a person 

 misses something, — perhaps some of his store of rice, — he gets 

 out a bamboo tube in which is kept secreted the magic bongat. 

 He lays the bamboo joint in the same place from which the rice 

 was stolen, and repeats this formula: 



"Whoever took my rice, 

 Curse him with bulging eyes; 352a 

 Make his body swell ; 

 After that let him die." 



This charm makes the abdomen of the guilty one grow abnor- 

 mally large ; his eyes protrude from his head ; his strength leaves 

 him, and by and by he dies. They say that this way of detecting 

 a thief is very simple, because it may easily be seen who gets big 

 belly and bulging eyes. 



In connection with the magical punishment of a thief, the test 

 used to discover guilt is of interest; although the test or ordeal, 

 with its appeal to the gods, belongs rather to the category of de- 

 votional performances than to magic arts. 



J5X Father Gisbert speaks of the use of bongat as common both to Moro and to pagan 

 tribes, and it is possible that this charm may have been borrowed from the Moro. 

 "When the thief is discovered, he may be cured by putting powder from the other joint 

 into the water and bathing his body with it." Blair and Robertson : op. cit., vol. 43, 

 p. 239. 1906. 



3sj a The same conception is to be found in the Atharva-Veda, in the lines, "Make the 

 confessing sinner's eyes fall from his head, both right and left." R. T. H. Griffith 

 (tr.): op. cit., vol. 1, p. 19. 1895. 



