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Updated: June 23, 2025
The writer has recorded these diams from various mediums in widely separated towns and has found them quite uniform in text and content. The explanatory tales were likewise secured from the mediums, or from old men and women who "know the customs." The stories of the last division are the most frequently heard and, as already indicated, are told by all.
In the Pala-an diam she relates, in story form, the cause of the sickness, but in this case ends with a direct invocation to the spirits in Dadáya to "make them well again if you please". The balance of the diams, 35-40, are in story form, and seem intended more as an explanation to the people as to the causes of their troubles than to be directed toward the spirits.
The purely ritualistic tales, called diams, are learned word by word by the mediums, as a part of their training for their positions, and are only recited while an animal is being stroked with oil preparatory to its being sacrificed, or when some other gift is about to be presented to the superior beings.
Continued misfortunes to the members of a household would also be an excuse for the ceremony. In this instance, the only variation from the procedure just given would be in the diams. The first to be recited tells how the spirit Maganáwan sent many snakes and birds to the gate of a town to demand the blood of a rooster mixed with rice.
However, the medium seldom has an audience, and rarely ever a single listener, as she recites the diams she has learned verbatim from her instructors when preparing for the duties of her office. Myths 41-54 are of quite a different type. They are generally told by the mediums or wise old people, during the ceremonies, but always to a crowd of eager listeners.
Several other spirits then entered the body of the medium, and after receiving food and drink, gave friendly advice. When the child is about two years old, a ceremony known as Olog is held. The mediums who are summoned prepare a spirit mat, and at once begin to recite diams over the body of a bound pig.
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