﻿496 The Philippine Journal of Science i9u 



[Continuation of footnote numbered 65.] 



star that rises in the west, which they call gaganayan while they call the 

 natives of the neighborhood by the same name. On seeing that star they 

 attend to the planting of their waste and wretched fields in order to sow 

 them with yams and camotes, which form their usual and natural food." 

 Cf. also, Blair and Robertson, ut supra: 5, 165 (Loarca, Relation, ca. 

 1580); 7, 189, 190 (Plasencia, Customs of the Tagalogs, 1589). Mr. Otto 

 Scheerer, of the Uuiversky of the Philippines, in a letter to me very 

 appropriately warns against considering the native words of the calendar 

 of the above text as the exact equivalents of the months of our calendar. 

 They do not indicate divisions of thirty or thirty-one days. Mr. Scheerer 

 says: 



"Their names indicate the beginning, lapse, or end of rural occupation 

 or natural phenomena, which used to take place at more or less the same 

 time indicated by our moons, but are far from being so sharply defined 

 and are really more in the nature of 'seasons,' such as our 'harvest,' 'fall,' 

 etc. Bauco, being a town in Lepanto, the words [of the calendar in the text] 

 should be, so far as I know, Tinguian, a dialect of which I possess very 

 scant information and other people, too, I believe. We possess, in the 

 matter of linguistic data concerning these Islands, such a mass of confused 

 and unreliable information that I should hate to see it added to in the 

 more enlightened era of investigation by Americans. I notice that these 

 names must have been taken down by some Filipino from the lowlands, 

 since they show the characteristic Spanish orthography current among the 

 Christian population of the Islands. This spelling is, however, also found 

 adopted by one or the other literate Igorot. All I can do is to compare 

 them with identical or similar words in other known dialects from northern 

 Luzon, without, however, vouchsafing, in so doing, that there exists an 

 actual identity of meaning. 



Libtong. This word occurs in the same form in Ilocano, where it means 

 lake or ditch of stagnant water. 



Atong. In Isinai the word atung means heat, warmth, sickness. In Ilocano 

 atang designates a superstition consisting in placing the first pickings 

 of some fruit, a plate of meat, or of any other food, in the corners of 

 the house, in the garden, or field, or somewhere in the mountain, in 

 order to appease some malign spirit. In Ibanag atang means any 

 kind of herb used as a vegetable. The change from 'o' in atong to 'a' in 

 atang might be nothing else than a different pronunciation of a certain 

 indistinct primitive sound well known to linguists as the 'pepet vowel.' 



Panlitonan. This word is unknown to me. In structure it is characterized 

 by prefix pan and suffix an, which often help to form words indicating 

 either the place or the time where or when the action indicated by the 

 stem is executed, so that panlitonan may mean the time when that is 

 done which is expressed by liton. 



Becas. In Inibaloi, bekds means hulled rice, which in Ilocano is bagds, in 

 Tagalog bigds. Observe here again the indistinct (pepet) vowel- 

 changing from 'e' to 'a' and 'i.' 



Deam. This is an unknown word. It might go back to a form dalam, 

 dayam, dagam. 



Adug. In Ilocano and Pampanga (and old Tagalog?) alog means inundated, 

 low-lying land (whence, tagalog, dweller on such lands). The changes 

 from 'd' to '1' and from 'u' to 'o' are very common. 



