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Mebuyan
The Bagobo of Mindanao tell of Mebuyan, who went below the earth after a quarrel with her brother Lumabat. She rules a town of dead babies and feeds them from her many breasts. All spirits stop there on the way to Gimokudan.
Folklore is retold; versions differ.
Old stories: Lumabat and Mebu'yan
Sources: Philippine Folk-Tales, JAFL 1905-1913 (Bayliss, Maxfield, Millington, Gardner, Benedict)
The story
Mebuyan is a figure of Bagobo belief in Mindanao, recorded by Laura Watson Benedict in her 1913 article "Bagobo Myths," which is in the public domain. In that account, a woman, the sister of the hero Lumabat, quarrels with him. She refuses to go with him to the sky. She sits on a rice mortar, which turns and sinks into the earth. She says she will shake a lemon tree below. Ripe fruit falling means an old person dies, and green fruit means a young one. After that she is called Mebuyan.
She rules Banua Mebuyan, her own town, below the earth. Her body is covered with breasts, and she nurses the babies who die while they still need milk. When they no longer need it, they go on to their families in Gimokudan, the land of the dead.
Every spirit stops in her town. Benedict wrote that spirits wash in a black river there. This makes them feel at home, so they do not try to return to their bodies. This is the story as told in that book. Bagobo communities may tell other versions. Ritual words are not given.