Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/357

 plantain-leaves. Round the whole is placed a cylindrical piece of tin or other metal called glōng, which serves to prevent the dishes from falling when the dalōng is moved about. The whole stands beneath a handsomely worked cover in the shape of a great truncated cone, the summit of which is sunk inwards so as to resemble a crater. Over this again is spread a costly cloth covering known as seuhab. The second dalōng contains simply rice, but is also provided with the protecting cylinder named glōng, the cover (sagè) and the cloth (seuhab).

To complete a feast at which idangs are used, after the rice and its accessories which we have just described, two more dalōngs are brought forward, one filled with glutinous rice and a sweet, savoury sort of plantain sauce, and the other with sundry sweetmeats.

If there are no persons of importance among the guests, two complete idangs will suffice, one being set in the front or stair verandah for the women. Should the food run short, more rice etc. is simply added. But distinguished guests often have a separate idang a-piece or between two of them, while the numerous attendants (rakans) who invariably accompany them, are given everyday fare.

At a wedding-feast, as on all ordinary occasions, the male guests are served first: the women must wait till their lords have finished.

The bridal pair have also food served them, and are even requested to eat out of the same dish, but their share of the feast is of course merely nominal. After partaking of this pretended meal, the young pair are smeared behind the ears with yellow glutinous rice, the bride by the bisans (the relatives of her husband), the bridegroom by the peunganjōs of the bride. On this occasion the bride receives from each of the bisans a gift in money, about one or two dollars.