BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 203 



Oleng's, a young man gifted with unusual beauty, grace in dancing 

 and charm of manner. When he arrived at Talun, he was just con- 

 valescing from a terrible illness, brought on by eating some poison- 

 ous substance that had been given him at Bansalan. 33 ° He had pre- 

 sumed too far upon his social charms while visiting in the homes 

 of the sturdy and self-willed mountain girls, and they had deter- 

 mined to punish him in their own way. As soon as Singan had 

 slipped into her trance, the anito of Saliman's malady came and 

 said to him: "This is a woman sickness. Do you know me? I 

 am the Sickness that makes you so skinny. Your lip is pale and 

 dry, and I caused that too, at the time when the women at Ban- 

 salan gave you medicine in your betel, so as to make you very 

 sick." On hearing this, Saliman called on the Malaki t'Olu k'Waig 

 saying: "You must take care of us, Malaki t'Olu k'Waig, and 

 send the sickness to your own town. Do not let the diseases go 

 out from there." 



Then one of the anito gave instructions as to the proper remedies 

 for Saliman, as follows: "You take uli-uli and other good weeds, 

 rub them on your joints, and repeat at the same time these words, 

 'Go back, Sickness, to your own body.'" 331 



Then Miyanda put some question in regard to gifts for the bam- 

 boo prayer-stand, and one of the anito said in reply : "The Seiiora 

 must give a string of beads to put in the tambara, and I, in return, 

 will give her one baliniitung, because she is the first American lady 

 that ever came here. If she fails to put beads in the tambara, she 

 will be attacked, after a while, by sickness." 



CHAH3IS AND MAGICAL BITES 



In the spiritual environment of the Bagobo, one seems aware of 

 a somewhat exact apportionment of magical potentiality, rather than 

 of a universal magical influence pervading the whole world. When 

 some phenomenon out of the ordinary or one hard to explain is 

 observed, it is called by one of several names, each of which im- 

 plies what we would call magic ; but each of these names has a 

 particular meaning of its own that does not lend itself to the idea 



330 A Bagobo village not far from Mati. It was reported at Mati that the Bansalan 

 girls whom Saliman attempted to approach had put into his betel, when they prepared 

 it for him, a "medicine'' that would kill a man. 



3 3 ' The "body" of the sickness was the drug that the girls had given Saliman. 



