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A group of eight or ten men formed, as is shown in Pl. CXXXI, and danced contraclockwise around and around the small circle. Each dancer beat his blood and emotions into sympathetic rhythm on his gangsa, and each entered intently yet joyfully into the spirit of the occasion they had defeated an enemy in the way they had been taught for generations. It was a month of feasting and holidays.
Tukukan!" or the name of the pueblo from which the head was taken. This is to divert the battle-ax of their enemy from their own necks. The head is washed in the river by sousing it up and down by the hair; and the party returns to the fawi where the lower jaw is cut from the head, boiled to remove the flesh, and becomes a handle for the victor's gangsa.
He brings the head to his ato and it is put in a small funnel-shaped receptacle, called "sak-o'-long," which is tied on a post in the stone court of the fawi. The entire ato joins in a ceremony for the day and night; it is called "se'-dak." A dog or hog is killed, the greater part of which is eaten by the old men of the ato, while the younger men dance to the rhythmic beats of the gangsa.
As the boys come stringing home at night from watching the palay fields, they come dancing, rhythmically beating a can, or two sticks, or their dinner basket, or beating time in the air as though they held a gangsa . The dance is in them, and they amuse themselves with it constantly. Both boys and girls are much in the river, where they swim and dive with great frolic.
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