222 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Ordeal or Test 



If two men are suspected of theft, and each man, laying the 

 blame on the other, asserts his own innocence, the test called 

 pasilume is resorted to. Both men are forced to swim in the river, 

 while the people gather on the bank to watch. Just before the 

 suspected men go into the water, the owner of the stolen property 

 recites the following invocation. 



"Behold, Diwata; 



Like needles your teeth, 



Like lunga-seeds 353 your eyes. 



Whoever stole my tap-tap, 35i 



Send him cursed from the water." 



Then the guilty one comes out from the river, but the innocent 

 man sinks to the bottom like a stone, and lies there all day. In 

 the evening, it is said, he is taken out unhurt. If by any chance 

 the thief should sink, he would be seized by the Gamo-Gamo people 

 who haunt the rivers and be tormented by them. All the river- 

 spirits of this class carry sharp iron punches, with which they prick 

 and gash the guilty person, but they never touch the innocent. 

 As long as the thief is in the water, he feels the torture ; yet on 

 emerging his body does not show the wounds. 



His guilt now established beyond doubt, there remains for him 

 but to make reparation as required. He must give whatever the 

 owner of the stolen goods demands — agongs, spears, or what not. 

 There is no set ratio between the amount of the theft and the 

 compensation insisted on. If a tap-tap worth two pesos has been 

 stolen, the owner may, if he please, demand five agongs (the 

 equivalent of about one hundred pesos) in satisfaction for the wrong 

 done to him. The supposed thief, if unable to pay or to borrow 

 the agongs for payment, would in the normal course of events 

 become the slave of his creditor. 



Ki/.iil tells us that, "The early Filipinos had a great horror of 

 theft, and even the most anti-Filipino historian could not accuse 

 them of being a thievish race. To day, however, they have lost 

 their horror of that crime. One of the old Filipino methods of 



,63 A small, black, edible seed, about the size of a mustard-seed. 



34 * Agonga arc beaten with a small woodca hammer called tup-tap, which has a head 

 coated with rubber overlaid by cloth. 



