When the mother notices her condition she asks who the father of the child is, and on being told that the man will not marry her the mother often tries to exert a rather tardy influence for better morals.  She says, “That is bad.  Why have you done this?” (when the chances are that the unfortunate, girl was born into a family of but one head); “it will be well for him to give the child a sementera to work.”  About the same time the young man informs his mother of his relations with the girl, and of her condition, and again the maker of a people’s morals seems to attempt to mold the already hardened clay.  She says, “My son, that is bad.  Why have you done it?  Why do you not marry her?” And the son answers simply and truthfully, “I have another girl.”  Without attempt at remonstrance the father gives a rice sementera to the child when it is 6 or 7 years old, for that is the price fixed by the group conscience for deserting a girl with a child.

It is not usual for a married man to go to the o’-lag, though a young man may go if one of his late mates is still alone.  He is usually welcomed by the girl, for there may yet be possibilities of her becoming his permanent wife.  A man whose wife is pregnant, however, seldom visits the o’-lag, because he fears that, if he does, his wife’s child will be prematurely born and die.

The o’-lag is built where the girls desire it and is said to be commonly located in places accessible to the men; this appears true to one going over the pueblo with this statement in mind.

The life in the o’-lag does not seem to weaken the boys or girls or cause them to degenerate, neither does it appear to make them vicious.  Whereas there is practically no sense of modesty among the people, I have never seen anything lewd.  Though there is no such thing as virtue, in the modern sense of the word, among the young people after puberty, children before puberty are said to be virtuous, and the married woman is said always to be true to her husband.

According to a recent translator of Blumentritt[19] that author is made to say (evidently speaking of the o’-lag): 

Amongst most of the tribes [Igorot] the chastity of maidens is carefully guarded, and in some all the young girls are kept together till marriage in a large house where, guarded by old women, they are taught the industries of their sex, such as weaving, pleating, making cloth from the bark of trees, etc.

There is no such institution in Bontoc Igorot society.  The purpose of the o’-lag is as far from enforcing chastity as it well can be.  The old women never frequent the o’-lag, and the lesson the girls learn there is the necessity for maternity, not the “industries of their sex” —­ which children of very primitive people acquire quite as a young fowl learns to scratch and get its food.

Marriage