ying to the right,
to the left, as they slowly droned in melancholy cadence:

You were old, and old people die. You are dead, and now we shall
place you in the earth. We too are old, and soon we shall follow you.

Again and again they droned, and when they ceased others within
the house took up the strain. During the singing the carabao head
was brought from the house, and the horns, with small section of
attached skull, chopped out, and the head returned to the ceiling of
the dwelling.

Presently a man came with a slender stick to measure the coffin. He
drove a nursing mother, with a woman companion and small child,
from comfortable seats on the upturned wood. The people, including
the group of old women, were driven away from the front of the house,
the coffin was laid down on the ground before the door, and an unopened
8-gallon olla of "preserved" meat was set at its foot. An old woman,
in no way distinguishable from the others by paraphernalia or other
marks, muttering, squatted beside the olla. Two men untied the bands
from the corpse, and one lifted it free from the chair and carried
it in his arms to the coffin. It was most unsightly, and streams of
rusty-brown liquid ran from it. It was placed face up, head elevated
even with the rim, and legs bent close at the knees but only slightly
at the hips. The old woman arose from beside the olla and helped lay
two new breechcloths and a blanket over the body. The face was left
uncovered, except that a small patch of white cloth ravelings, called
"fo-ot'," was laid over the eyes, and a small white cloth was laid
over the hair of the head. The burden was quickly caught up on men's
shoulders and hurried without halting to the grave. Willing bands
swarmed about the coffin. At all times as many men helped bear it
as could well get hold, and when they mounted the face of a 7-foot
sementera wall a dozen strong pairs of hands found service drawing
up and supporting the burden. Many men followed from the house one
brought the coffin cover and another the carabao horns -- but the
women and children remained behind, as is their custom at burials.

At the grave the coffin rested on the earth a moment[22] while a few
more basketfuls of dirt were thrown out, until the grave was about 5
feet deep. The coffin was then placed in the grave, the cover laid on,
and with a joke and a laugh the pair of horns was placed facing it
at the head. Instantly thirty-two men sprang on the piles o