oon the woman sat down on the
big rice mortar, [45] and said to Lumabat, "Now I am going down below
the earth, down to Gimokudan. [46] Down there I shall begin to shake
the lemon-tree. Whenever I shake it, somebody up on the earth will
die. If the fruit shaken down be ripe, then an old person will die on
the earth; but if the fruit fall green, the one to die will be young."

Then she took a bowl filled with pounded rice, and poured the rice
into the mortar for a sign that the people should die and go down
to Gimokudan. Presently the mortar began to turn round and round
while the woman was sitting upon it. All the while, as the mortar
was revolving, it was slowly sinking into the earth. But just as
it began to settle in the ground, the woman dropped handfuls of the
pounded rice upon the earth, with the words: "See! I let fall this
rice. This makes many people die, dropping down just like grains of
rice. Thus hundreds of people go down; but none go up into heaven."

Straightway the mortar kept on turning round, and kept on going lower
down, until it disappeared in the earth, with Lumabat's sister still
sitting on it. After this, she came to be known as Mebu'yan. Before
she went down below the earth, she was known only as Tube' ka Lumabat
("sister of Lumabat").

Mebu'yan is now chief of a town called Banua Mebu'yan ("Mebu'yan's
town"), where she takes care of all dead babies, and gives them milk
from her Breasts. Mebu'yan is ugly to look at, for her whole body is
covered with nipples. All nursing children who still want the milk, go
directly, when they die, to Banua Mebu'yan, instead of to Gimokudan,
and remain there with Mebu'yan until they stop taking milk from her
breast. Then they go to their own families in Gimokudan, where they
can get rice, and "live" very well.

All the spirits stop at Mebu'yan's town, on their way to
Gimokudan. There the spirits wash all their joints in the black
river that runs through Banua Mebu'yan, and they wash the tops of
their heads too. This bathing (pamalugu [47]) is for the purpose of
making the spirits feel at home, so that they will not run away and
go back to their own bodies. If the spirit could return to its body,
the body would get up and be alive again.

Story of Lumabat and Wari

Tuglay and Tuglibung [48] had many children. One of them was called
Lumabat. There came a time when Lumabat quarrelled with his sister
and was very angry with her. He said, "I will go to the sky