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Keeping time to the music, they lift it from the mortar, take one step, then stop, strike the spear and head-axe together, then step and stop again. At each halt the medium takes a little of the rice and blood from the winnower and sprinkles it on the ground for the spirits to eat.
As soon as the pounding is finished, the medium places some of the newly broken rice in a bamboo dish, and places this on a rice winnower. She also adds a skirt, five pieces of betel-nut, two piper leaves, and a little dish of oil, and carries the collection below the pala-an, where a bound pig lies.
So the boy takes a part of the blood and rice away, and gives it to the spirits, then puts it back." The spirit was followed, by Gilen, who bade the lad take hold of one side of the winnower, while he held the other. Raising it in the air, they danced half way round the mortar, then retraced their steps. "This is because the spirits only partially took the life away. Now they put it back."
Like some great building that has suffered many modifications of successive generations of architects, some sombre weather-beaten pile, the delight of a poet, the story would drive the commentator and the industrious winnower of words, facts, and dates to despair.
In the San Juan district, the fire is made of pine sticks; for "the burning pine gives a bright light, and thus makes it clear to the spirits that the child is born. The heat and smoke make the child hard and sturdy." Just before the naming, the rice winnower is circled above the fire and the person officiating calls to the spirits, saying, "Come and take this child, or I shall take it."
As the winnower sorts the grain, so sorrow sets on one side those who have the will to live, and on the other those who wish to die. It is the terrible law of life, which is stronger than love! The mother who sees her son dying, the friend who sees his friend drowning, if they cannot save them, they do not cease their efforts to save themselves: they do not die with them.
At the command of the medium, four or five men begin to play on copper gongs, while the wife of the host comes forward and receives the spear and rooster in one hand. The medium takes the head-axe, and then the two women take hold of the winnower with their free hands.
It is accomplished by carrying the beans mechanically to the cracking machine at a considerable height, whence husks and nibs are allowed to fall before the winnower: the separated nibs are assorted according to size. Some of the shells find their way to the Emerald Isle, to be used by the peasants for the weak infusion called "miserables."
On an inverted rice-mortar, in the yard, is placed a jar of basi, notched chicken feathers, and boar's tusks. The man and his wife are summoned before this, are decorated as on the day before, and are instructed to dance three times around the mortar. While this is going on, a shield and a rice winnower are leaned against each other so as to form an arch on which lies a sheaf of rice.
The first indication of the future Millet is in a picture in the Salon of 1848, "The Winnower," which has, in subject at least, much the character of the work which followed his establishment at Barbizon.
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