It was a month of feasting and holidays. Carabaos, hogs, dogs,
and chickens were killed and eaten. No work except that absolutely
necessary was performed, but all people -- men, women, and children --
gathered at the ato dance grounds and were joyous together.
Each ato brought a score of loads of palay, and for two days women
threshed it out in a long wooden trough for all to eat in a great
feast. This ceremonial threshing is shown in Pl. CXXXII. Twenty-four
persons, usually all women, lined up along each side of the trough,
and, accompanying their own songs by rhythmic beating of their pestles
on the planks strung along the sides of the trough, each row of happy
toilers alternately swung in and out, toward and from the trough,
its long heavy pestles rising and falling with the regular "click,
click, thush; click, click, thush!" as they fell rebounding on the
plank, and were then raised and thrust into the palay-filled trough.
After heads have been taken by an ato any person of that ato -- man,
woman, or child -- may be tattooed; and in Bontoc pueblo they maintain
that tattooing may not occur at any other time, and that no person,
unless a member of the successful ato, may be tattooed.
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