ABSTRACT
Kumiha is a handsome, rather large and imposing, well-knit and well-preserved figure o f a man o f about fifty-eight years, almost toothless, with iron grey hair, and quite different from Ngidulu in temperament. His knowledge o f Ifugao lore is probably nearly equal to Ngidulu’s and his myth versions are certainly better, his diction being more dramatic and richly figurative-at times profoundly effective, as, for example, “ The rain descending folds o f a hipbag-ed [fell in torrents, fell like the descending folds o f a hip-bag] ” or, “ This kinship group will be an unwater-marked clump o f giant bamboo with a profusion o f thorny lower twigs, growing in a swamp [that is, impregnable and unassailable].” Furthermore he does not overburden his myth recitations with a tiresome jingle o f reduplications as Ngidulu does.
