RICE CULTURE

In Bali only men plant and attend to the rice, but women a even children help with the harvest. Everybody wears coats and great sun-hats of bamboo for protection against the burning t of the sun. The line of reapers moves like a living row of enormous mushrooms, cutting the rice with small iron blades se wooden frames, just large enough to be hidden in the palm of the hand.

The stalks are cut one by one and tied later into h bunches. When all the rice is cut, the Rice Mothers of various sawa-owners are dressed in a skirt of new white cloth held at the middle of the sheaf by a rope of white yarn, a small apron (lamak) , and a silk scarf. The head-dress is represented by the ends of the stalks, ornamented with flowers and cutout palm-leaf in the form of a fan, often with a human face added drawn on a heart-shaped piece of palm.

We witnessed a harvest festival in Ubud: the dressed Rice Mothers were ceremoniously assembled in the little rice temple out in the fields, decorated for the occasion with pennants (penyor) - tall bamboo poles hung with lacy ornaments of palmleaf - and with beautiful lamaks, strips many feet long, made of the young yellow leaves of the coconut or sugar palm pinned together with bits of bamboo, covered with delicate patterns representing moons, stylized girls, trees, and so forth, cut out of the mature leaves of palm, dark green lace against a background of lemon yellow.The crowd started for the village in a long procession wit music.

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