BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEBEMOXIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 187 



Province, they at once inferred that Americans wished to favor 

 these traditional enemies of the mountain tribes. Moro customs 

 and Moro products would be favored by Americans. "We now 

 take a Moro gintulu to cover the dead man, because if we used 

 the Bagobo cloth it would make the American governor of the 

 Moro province angry." Before the funeral the body is dressed in 

 a nice pair of trousers, if a man, or fine woven skirt, if a woman, 

 so that it be suitably arrayed for making its entrance into Gimokudan. 



During the one or two nights that pass before burial, a death- 

 watch {damag) is observed to protect the corpse from all the buso, 

 who are supposed to smell it from afar and to come flying or 

 running to eat the flesh, but who fear to enter a company of living 

 people. At the coast, it is customary to play at the wake a 

 Visayan game of cards called trai/setis, but whether any function 

 of divination is attached to the game, or whether it be a mere 

 device to keep awake, is not known to me. A little jesting and 

 fun relieve the strain. If anybody falls asleep he is not disturbed, 

 but they punish him by scraping soot from the bottom of the clay 

 pots and slyly rubbing it over the miscreant's face and legs. 

 When he wakens in the morning he sees his blackened skin, and 

 realizes to his deep mortification that they have made game of him. 



A highly efficacious device for scaring Buso from the coffin is 

 that of producing a crocodile design 292 on coffin or pall. In the 

 mountains, it was formerly the custom when a datu died to carve 

 the head and lid of his coffin into the shape of a crocodile's head 

 with open jaws showing tongue and teeth. The head was a carving 

 in the round that projected in front of the body of the coffin, the 

 lid forming the upper jaw, so that to open the coffin it would be 

 necessary to lift the upper jaw and thus open the mouth of the 

 dreaded reptile. 



In ordinary burials, a conventional pattern of lozenges and zig- 

 zags made from strips of red or white cotton cloth is tacked on 

 the black cloth that covers the sides and lid of the box, thus 

 producing a highly schematic representation that is called buaya, 

 or crocodile. The women tear off lengths of cloth and turn 

 down the edges in exact folds, while the men attach the strips 

 to the pall. 



At the closing of the coffin, the chief mourner gives utterance 



192 See p. 42. 



