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Balaua: This, the largest and most important of the spirit structures, is built during the Sayang ceremony. The roofing is of plaited bamboo, covered with cogon grass. This is supported by eight uprights, which likewise furnish attachment for the bamboo flooring. There are no sides to the building, but it is so sturdily constructed that it lasts through several seasons.
The women strip a large part of the fiber in local use, but all that prepared for trade is produced by the men. When the ever-present cogon grass begins to invade a clearing, the young hemp is planted. In about eighteen months it has grown to a height of some sixteen feet and is ready to be cut.
The material here presented was gathered from the people of Labau, the Malalag cogon, and those living near the headwaters of the Ma-al and Padada rivers.
New clearings are frequently made near to the old, for the primitive tools with which the people work are ill-fitted to combat the incursion into the open land of the rank cogon grass. Only the exhaustion of suitable timber land for a new clearing, the prevalence of an epidemic, or the near approach of a powerful enemy will cause the people to move their homes from one district to another.
Datu Baklay who now lives near the Padada river, but was formerly a resident of the Malalag cogon plains, claims that the ceremony is not a yearly event, as is the case with the Bagobo, neither does it follow each death; but if the deceased has been a person of great importance or a member of the ruler's family it should take place in eight days, regardless of the phase of the moon or the position of the stars.
When he was in the middle of the field he turned back his face and saw four young alzados who followed him through the cogon grass, and he used magic so that the flame of the fire was so hot that the alzados who followed could not reach him. When the flame of the fire was over he turned his face again when he reached the middle of the next field.
Now, if there is anything else hotter on the face of the earth than a walk through the cogon in the dry season with the sun shining vertically down, it has yet to be discovered. At Payawan we were met by Captain Jeff D. Gallman, P. C, Lieutenant-Governor of the Sub-province of Ifugao, accompanied by one of his chieftains, who made a splendid picture in his barbaric finery.
During the rainy season they are covered with ferns and orchids, while exquisite white lilies, larger than Easter lilies, dot the hillsides. The dense cógon of the Philippine lowlands is absent.
At Bulatakay they are a day's march back from the coast and to reach them it is necessary to pass for several hours through a rolling belt of forest land, then as the mountains are approached, gently sloping cogon plains about ten miles in width are crossed. West of Malalag they are still far from the sea with a belt of hill Tagakaolo between them and the coast people.
He climbs high tree and looks in all directions. Sees Igorot, who are dancing around the head of his daughter. He takes juice from the poison tree and goes to the dance, where he is mistaken for a companion. He serves liquor to others and poisons them. Takes daughter's head and starts home. Is followed by four enemies. Uses magic and causes cogon field to burn, so foes are delayed.
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