erent
towns to help him make the ceremony for the spirits. [66] As soon
as the people arrived, the tikgi came also; and they flew over the
people's heads and made them drink basi until they were drunk. Then
they said to Ligi:

"We are going home now; it is not good for us to stay here, for we
cannot sit among the people."

When they started home Ligi followed them until they came to the
bana-asi tree, and here he saw them take off their feathers and put
them in the rice granary. Then suddenly they became one beautiful
maiden.

"Are you not the tikgi who came to cut my rice?" asked Ligi. "You
look to me like a beautiful maiden."

"Yes," she replied; "I became tikgi and cut rice for you, for otherwise
you would not have found me." Ligi took her back to his house where
the people were making the ceremony, and as soon as they saw her they
began chewing the magic betel-nuts to find who she might be.

The quid [67] of Ebang and her husband and that of the tikgi went
together, so they knew that she was their daughter who had disappeared
from their house one day long ago while they were in the fields. In
answer to their many questions, she told them that she had been in the
bana-asi tree, where Kaboniyan [68] had carried her, until the day that
she changed herself into the tikgi birds and went to the field of Ligi.

Ligi was very fond of the beautiful girl and he asked her parents if
he might marry her. They were very willing and decided on a price he
should pay. After the wedding all the people remained at his house,
feasting and dancing for three months.

The Story of Sayen [69]

_Tinguian_

In the depths of a dark forest where people seldom went, lived a
wizened old Alan. [70] The skin on her wrinkled face was as tough
as a carabao hide, and her long arms with fingers pointing back from
the wrist were horrible to look at. Now this frightful creature had
a son whose name was Sayen, and he was as handsome as his mother was
ugly. He was a brave man, also, and often went far away alone to fight.

On these journeys Sayen sometimes met beautiful girls, and though
he wanted to marry, he could not decide upon one. Hearing that one
Danepan was more beautiful than any other, he determined to go and
ask her to be his wife.

Now Danepan was very shy, and when she heard that Sayen was coming
to her house she hid behind the door and sent her servant, Laey,
out to meet him. And so it happened that Sayen, not seeing Danep