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Always a fresh group was kneeling before some fresh altar and offerings being made. Every stone shrine and every bamboo table was soon filled to overflowing with offerings, and in an endless procession the women still brought more, meeting the counter-stream of those which had been blessed and might be carried away. The ground was strewn with metjaroe, the offerings to baleful spirits, and with kneeling girls and women being blessed by a priestess. The Barong's small latticed house in the lower court had a continual stream of visitors, sitting on the doorstep or circulating in the small space round his body, or praying at his feet.

The temple lies a little way from the road, high above the river where the gods go to bathe. The wide river spread out brilliant in the sunshine among great rocks, at the foot of the steep cliff down which, by a narrow winding path, the gods were carried, their litters covered with great sheaves of rice straw.

Two gongs sat at intervals to accompany their passage with music. I caught glimpses of Redjang dancers preparing in the courtyard of a house. They were dressecrin cloth-of-gold, sleeveless, and wore amazing head-dresses, like Djanger in shape, but built up tier upon tier with frangipani flowers, whose petals were cut and curled; a magnificent impression of gold and white, on a foundation of glittering fragments of painted wood. The backs of their crowns were also entirely made of flowers. They came out to kneel in the path of the gods as the procession wound out of the narrow lane which led up from the river and passed into the open space, divided from the temple court by a low wall Already the attendants were in trance. A man or two came dancing before them with a kris, doing wide stylized steps, and immediately behind these came the litters, the young men who carried them being harnessed, as it were, between bamboo traces. Frantic scenes took place.

They swerved about with their burdens, driving the long poles of the litters among the onlookers, so that the gods were tossed from side to side as if on a rough sea. They were guided one by one down the lane into the temple, while the Redjangs, screened by a few older women, sat in a flowery group against the wall of the inner temple court. Soon all the litters were in the big outer court of the temple, including one on which a regally dressed small boy was enthroned. The crowd was driven helterskelter by the long poles; even those on the raised platforms were in dancer of being prodded


 

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