United States or Cuba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The ceremony of the first day is called "Su-yak'." Each group of kin all descendants of one man or woman who has no living ascendants kills a large hog and makes a feast. This day is said to be passed without oral ceremony. The ceremony of the second day was a double one. The first was called "Wa-lit'" and the second "Mang'-mang."
Each also carried a chicken in an open-work basket, while tucked into the basket was a round stick about 14 inches long and half an inch in diameter. This stick, "lo'-lo," is kept in the family from generation to generation. When the crest of the mountain was reached, each person in turn voiced an invitation to her departed ancestors to come to the Mang'-mang feast.
From it he took a two-quart olla containing water, a small wooden bowl of cooked rice, a bottle of native cane sugar, and a head-ax. He next kindled a blaze under the olla in a fireplace of three stones already set up. Then followed the ceremonial killing of the chicken, as described in the Mang'-mang rite of the second day.
Each family has the Mang'-mang ceremony, and so also has each broken household if it possesses a sementera though a lone woman calls in a man, who alone may perform the rite connected with the ceremonial killing, and who must cook the fowl. A lone man needs no woman assistant.
Word Of The Day