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Should the children be so fortunate as to possess a tin can, secured from some visiting traveller, they quickly convert it into a drum or gansa, and forthwith start a celebration. All can dance and sing, play on nose flutes, bamboo guitars, or Jew's harps. In addition to songs of their own composition, there are other songs, which are heard whenever the children are at play.
Using the same gansa as the Ifugao, the Igorot beats it on the convex side with a regular padded drumstick, whereas the Ifugao uses any casual stick on the concave side. Moreover, the Bontok dancers went around their circle, beating their gansas the while, in a sort of lope, the step being vigorous, long, easy, and high; as in all the other dances seen, the motion was against the sun.
When they played the gansa, Iwaginan took the alap and kinamayan and he gave them to Aponibolinayen and Agyokan. When Aponibolinayen and Agyokan had finished dancing, they made Aponitolau and Asindamáyan dance.
It is curved slightly and is about two feet long, and is held in one hand suspended by a bejuco string so that the vibrations are not interfered with. It is beaten with a drum-stick, as is also the shield. The gansa, or brass gong, the usual musical instrument of the Ifugaos, is never used in the funeral of a beheaded man. The two men who headed each procession carried two spears each.
Very soon our visitors began to dance for us to the sound of the gansa, their dance being different from that we had seen a few days before at Campote. As, however, the next day was one dance from morning to night, I shall not spend any more time upon this affair, except to say that, turn about being fair play, Cootes got up and gave such a representation as he was able of a pas seul.
The earlier voyage took only "Eleven or Twelve daies" and that by gansa power! The earlier author did not suggest that his hero encountered any particular difficulties of respiration, nor did he pause to consider in detail the problem of the nature of the intervening air through which his hero passed.
And then, as our trail wound in and out, different aspects of the same elements would present themselves, until really the faculty of admiration became exhausted. The gansa, made of bronze, in shape resembles a circular pan about twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, with a border of about two inches turned up at right angles to the face.
"Ala! now that we have finished chewing, I will give the payment for Aponibolinayen, and now that you have found out that I am your son father and mother let us give the payment," said Ini-init. His father and mother said, "If that is what you say, my child, we will give," and they gave him the name of Aponitolau. And Aponitolau said, "Ala! you play the gansa so that we can dance."
Dancing went on the whole day; the sound of the gansa never ceased. A particularly interesting dance was that of a number of little girls, eight or ten years of age, who went through their steps with the greatest seriousness and dignity, a very pretty sight.
The half-dozen houses of this tiny village are of the usual Filipino type, and the very few inhabitants were dressed after the fashion of the Christianized provinces. Nevertheless, we here first encountered the savage we had come up to see; for not only did they have the gansa, but they offered us a cañao.
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