" If the pests are very persistent,
the woman may kill a fowl and scatter its blood over the growing PADI,
while she charges the pests to disappear, and calls upon LAKI IVONG
(the god of harvests) to drive them out.
Women alone will gather the first ears of the crop. If they encounter
on their way to the fields any one of the following creatures,
they must at once return home, and stay there a day and a night, on
pain of illness or early death: certain snakes, spiders, centipedes,
millipedes, and birds of two species, JERUIT and BUBUT (a cuckoo). Or
again, if the shoulder straps of their large baskets should break
on the way, if a stump should fall against them, or the note of the
spider-hunter be heard, or if a woman strikes her foot by accident
against any object, the party must return as before.
It will be clear from the foregoing account that the women play the
principal part in the rites and actual operations of the PADI culture;
the men only being called in to clear the ground and to assist in
some of the later stages. The women select and keep the seed grain,
and they are the repositories of most of the lore connected with
it. It seems to be felt that they have a natural affinity to the
fruitful grain, which they speak of as becoming pregnant.
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