When all the rest of the rice in the field has been
reaped, "the Mother of the Rice" is cut down and carried with due
honour to the rice-barn, where it is laid on the floor, and all the
other sheaves are piled upon it. The Tomori, we are told, regard the
Mother of the Rice as a special offering made to the rice-spirit
Omonga, who dwells in the moon. If that spirit is not treated with
proper respect, for example if the people who fetch rice from the
barn are not decently clad, he is angry and punishes the offenders
by eating up twice as much rice in the barn as they have taken out
of it; some people have heard him smacking his lips in the barn, as
he devoured the rice. On the other hand the Toradjas of Central
Celebes, who also practice the custom of the Rice-mother at harvest,
regard her as the actual mother of the whole harvest, and therefore
keep her carefully, lest in her absence the garnered store of rice
should all melt away and disappear.
Again, just as in Scotland the old and the young spirit of the corn
are represented as an Old Wife (_Cailleach_) and a Maiden
respectively, so in the Malay Peninsula we find both the Rice-mother
and her child represented by different sheaves or bundles of ears on
the harvest-field.
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