Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate Part 14

The influence of Christian teaching is plain in some of the songs, plays, and stories of the natives, especially in the plays, for in them the hero is often a Christian prince who defeats a strong and wicked Mohammedan ruler, and releases an injured maiden. Change the names and the play becomes a modern English melodrama. In several of the islands, however, the impress of Spanish occupancy is slight, and customs are still in force that have existed for hundreds of years. On Mindanao are still to be found the politic devil-wors.h.i.+ppers, who, instead of seeking to ingratiate themselves with benevolent deities, whose favor is already a.s.sured, try to gain the goodwill of the fiends. Their rites are practised in caves in which will be found ugly figures of wood and an altar on which animals are sacrificed. The flesh of these animals is eaten by the devils, according to the priests, and by the priests, according to the white men. The evil spirits who appear in the half-darkness of these caves, leaping and screaming, goading the company to frenzy, are priests in disguise and in demoniac possession.

Tagbanuas tear a house down when a death occurs in it, bury the corpse in the woods, and mark the grave by dishes and pots used by the deceased in life. These implements are broken. Among our American Indians the outfits supplied to a dead man are in sound condition, as it is supposed he will need them on his journey to the happy hunting-grounds, while the Chinese put rice and chicken in sound vessels on the graves of their brethren, believing they will need refreshment when they start on the long journey to the land of the shades. Tramps know where the Chinese are accustomed to bury their dead in American cities. When food is placed before an Otaheite corpse it is not for the dead, but for the G.o.ds, and is intended to secure their good offices for the departed. While a Tagbanua corpse is above ground it is liable to be eaten by a vampire called the balbal that lives on Mindanao, has the form of a man with wings and great claws, tears open the thatch of houses and consumes bodies by means of a long tongue, which it thrusts through the opening in the roof. These Tagbanuas do not believe in a heaven in the skies, because, they say, you could not get up there. When a man dies he enters a cave that leads into the depths of the earth, and after travelling for a long time he arrives in the chamber where Taliakood sits,--a giant who employs his leisure in stirring a fire that licks two tree trunks without destroying them. The giant asks the new-comer if he has been good or bad in the world overhead, but the dead man makes no reply. He has a witness who has lived with him and knows his actions, and it is the function and duty of this witness to state the case. This little creature is a louse. On being asked what would happen if a native were to die without one of these attendants, the people protest that no such thing ever happens. So the louse, having neither to gain nor lose, reports the conduct of his commissary and a.s.sociate, and if the man has been bad, Taliakood throws him into the fire, where he is burned to ashes, and so an end of him. If he has been good, the giant speeds him on his way to a happy hunting-ground, where he can kill animals by thousands, and where the earth also yields fruits and vegetables in plenty. Here he finds a house, without having the trouble to build one, and a wife is also provided for him,--the deceased wife of some neighbor usually, although he can have his own wife if she is considerate enough to die when he does. Down here everybody is well off, though the rich, having had much pleasure in the world, have less of it than the poor. After a term of years the Tagbanua dies again and goes at once to a heaven in a deeper cave without danger from fire. Seven times he dies, each time going deeper and becoming happier, and probably gains Nirvana in the end. Occasionally a good spirit returns as a dove, and a bad one comes as a goat; indeed, a few of the bad ones are doomed to wander over the earth forever.

A common belief is that the soul is absent from the body in sleep, and if death occurs then the soul is lost. "May you die sleeping"

is one of the most dreadful of curses.

Among the Mangyan mountaineers it is customary to desert a person who is about to die. They return after his death, carry the corpse to the forest, build a fence about it, and roof it with a thatch. These people seem to have no word for G.o.d, spirit, or future life; they do not wors.h.i.+p either visible or unseen things, and are the most moral of the Filipinos. The lowlanders also desert their dying, and after death close all paths to the house, leave the skeleton of the defunct to be picked clean by ants, and change their names for luck.

When an islander in the Calamianes province dies his friends ask the corpse where it would like to be buried, naming several places, and lifting the body after each question. When the body seems to rise lightly the dead man has said, "Yes." It may then be buried, or placed in a tree in the desired locality, with such of its belongings as the family can spare, and the mourners watch around a fire that night until all the logs are consumed. The dead man walks about in the ashes, leaving his footprints, and sometimes shows himself to his relatives. Singing and feasting follow for several nights, and the house of the dead is then abandoned.

The holes in the marble cliffs of San Francisco Strait formerly contained the coffined dead of the tattooed Pintados, who sacrificed slaves at the funeral that they might attend their relatives in the next world. Fear of the spirits of these rocks was but partially overcome when a Spanish priest smashed the coffins and tumbled the bodies into the sea, for the strait is still haunted and the burial rocks are good places to keep away from after dark.

Among the Moslem Moros it is a sure pa.s.sport to heaven to kill a Christian, and when one remembers how the people have been robbed, tortured, and oppressed by nominal Christians, this item of faith is not surprising. The more Christians he kills the greater will be his reward. He bathes in a sacred spring, shaves his eye-brows, dresses in white, takes an oath before a pandita or native priest to die killing infidels; then, with the ugly creese, or wave-edged knife, he runs madly through the street, killing, right and left, until some considerate person shoots him. In the rage for blood he has been known to push himself farther against a sword or bayonet that had already entered his vitals in order to stab the man who had stopped him. When they hear of his death the relatives of the fanatic have a celebration, and declare that in the fall of the night they see him ride by on a white horse, bound for the home of the good, where no Christians ever go to vex the angels. These people are often fatalists. They will drink water known to be poisoned with typhoid germs, and when epidemics come they declare them to be the will of G.o.d, and refuse to take the slightest measure against infection. They believe that when a strange black dog runs by cholera follows on his heels.

Yet, like our Indians, the better Tagbanuas and Calamianes try to heal the sick through the aid of drugs and charms and incantations, and they have their medicine man or papalyan. There is in the forest a strange little fellow, known as the man of the wood, who has the power of giving to these doctors the art of healing. He rushes out upon one who walks alone, seeking power, and brandishes a spear, finally aiming it at the breast of the candidate, and advancing his foot as if to throw it. If the candidate runs he is unworthy, but if he stands his ground the little man of the wood drops his spear and gives a pearl to him. This pearl is never shown to anybody. It is looked at secretly at a patient's bedside, and if clear the physician will prescribe, but if it is dark, or has taken on a stony aspect, he resigns the case. The "drugs" are similar to those used by the Chinese, consisting in part of powdered teeth and bones and other animal preparations. Charms are in common use as a protection not only from disease but from murder and misfortune, and in the fighting between the Americans and the natives about Manila many poor, half-naked creatures, armed with bows and arrows, had ventured fearlessly into the zone of fire, believing themselves to be safe because they wore an anting-anting at the neck. This object, like an Indian's "good medicine," is anything,--a little book, a bright pebble, a church relic, a medal, an old bullet, a coin, a piece of cloth, a pack of cards. It is the faith that goes with it, not the object itself, that counts. Even Aguinaldo has been invested by his followers with superhuman power. Just before he resorted to arms against the Americans the natives knew that the time for rebellion had come, for a woman in Biacnabato gave birth to a child dressed in a general's uniform, and above Tondo a woman's figure crowned with snakes was painted in fire upon the night-sky.

In details of their faiths the tribes differ, but there is a prevalent belief in a principle of good that the Moros call Tuhan. The sun, moon, and stars are the light that s.h.i.+nes from him,--he is everywhere, all-seeing, all-powerful; he has given fleeting souls to brutes and eternal souls to men. The soul enters a child's body at birth, through the soft s.p.a.ce in the top of the head, and leaves through the skull at death. Their first men were giants, and Eve was fifty feet high, but as men's minds grew their bodies became of less account, and they will shrink and shrink until, at the world's end, they will be only three feet high, but will consist mostly of brains. Comparing a brawny savage with an anaemic scholar, one fancies there is reason in this forecast. The Tagbanuas have no Adam and Eve. Those of them who live beside the ocean say they are the children of Bulalacao, a falling star that descended to the sh.o.r.e and became a beautiful woman. The G.o.ds of these people are like men, but are stronger, living in caves, eating an ambrosia-like boiled rice that has the power of moving. Their G.o.ds sometimes steal their children.

Old Testament traditions are commonly accepted by the Moros, who believe in No (Noah), Adam, Mosa (Moses), Ibrahim (Abraham), Sulaiman (Solomon), Daud (David), and Yakub (Jacob); but creation myths are locally modified, and some tales of recent emergence of islands out of the sea are probably true. In all volcanic districts mountains may be shaken down and hills cast up in a day. Siquijor formerly bore the name of the Isle of Fire, for the natives say that in the days of their grandfathers a cloud brooded on the sea for a week, uttering thunders and hisses and flas.h.i.+ng forth bolts of fire. When the cloud lifted, Siquijor stood there. The geology of the island supports the tradition.

The future is differently conceived by different sects and families, some panditas teaching that the soul, having come from G.o.d, will return to him at death; others that it will sleep in the earth or the air until the world has ended, when all will be swept on a wind to a mount of judgment, where saints and angels will weigh them, and souls heavy with sin will fall into h.e.l.l; others that there is no h.e.l.l of fire, because there is not coal enough to keep it going, but that every man is punished until his soul is purified, when it rises to heaven, glowing with light and color; others that men are punished according to their sins; liars and gossips with sore mouths and tired jaws; gluttons with lame stomachs; jealous, cruel, tricky people with aching hearts; abusive and thievish ones with pains in their hands; others that one finds h.e.l.l enough on earth in fear, illness, disappointment, misunderstanding and Spaniards, to atone for all the mischief he is liable to make.

Animal Myths

In the fables of the Filipinos the animals often speak together in a common language. The dove, however, is the only one that comprehends human speech, and it is a creature of uncommon shrewdness and intelligence, like the hare in the Indian myths and Br'er Rabbit in the stories of our Southern negroes. Once the dove was a child. In shame and anger that its mother should refuse to give it some rice she was pounding for panapig (a sort of cake), it ran out of the cabin, took two leaves of a nipa, shaped wings from them, which it fastened to its shoulders, and fluttered into the boughs of a neighboring tree, changing, in its flight, from a child to a dove. It still calls for panapig.

Darwin is read backward by the natives, for they say that the monkey was a man, long, long ago, and might have been one still but for his manana habit, so general in the Spanish colonies. He had a partner whom he greatly vexed by his idleness, and once, when this partner was planting rice, he glanced up and saw the monkey squatted on the earth, with his face between his hands, watching the labors of the industrious member of the firm,--for nothing makes loafing sweeter than to see somebody else work. Enraged, the busy one caught up a cudgel and flung it at the monkey, who was thereupon seized with a sudden but futile activity, and started to run away. The club struck him in the rear so mightily that it entered his spinal column and stayed there, becoming his tail.

In the Moro tradition of the flood--a tradition almost world-wide--Noah and his family got into a box when the forty days of rain began, and one pair of each kind of bird and beast followed them. All of the human race except Noah, his wife and children, were either drowned or changed. Those men who ran to the mountains when they saw the flood rising became monkeys; those who flung themselves into the sea became fish; the Chinese turned into hornbills; a woman who was eating seaweed and kept on eating after the waves broke over her became a dugong.

In Mindanao, Basilan, and Sulu the pig is held in suspicion and its flesh is not eaten. The reason for this aversion is that the first pigs were grandchildren of the great Mahomet himself, and their conversion to these lowly quadrupeds fell out in this way: When Jesus (Isa) called on Mahomet, the latter, jealous of his reputed power, bade him guess what was in the next room. Christ said that he did not wish to do so. Mahomet then commanded him to prove his ability to see through walls, and added that if he made a mistake he would kill him. Thereupon Christ answered, "There are two animals in that chamber that are like no other in the world."

"Wrong!" cried the Prophet, plucking out his sword. "They are my grandchildren. You have spoken false, and you must lose your head."

"Look and see," insisted Christ, and Mahomet flung open the chamber door, whereupon two hogs rushed out. It should be added that while the divinity of Christ is denied in some of the Oriental religions, he figures in many of them as a great and good man, gifted with supernatural power. Moros charge as one reason for killing Christians that followers of Christ disgrace and belie mankind in teaching that men could kill their own G.o.d.

On Mindoro the timarau, a small buffalo that lives in the jungle, has given rise to rumors of a fierce and destructive creature that carries a single horn on his head. It is a wild and hard fighter, but it has two horns, and is not likely to injure any save those who are seeking to injure it. A creature with an armed head has lingered down from the day of Marco Polo, because in the stock of yarns a.s.sembled by that redoubtable tourist the unicorn figured. This was the rhinoceros, which is found so near the Philippines as Sumatra. The gnu of Africa is another possible ancestor of this creature, a belief in which goes back to the time of Aristotle; but the horse-like animal with a narwhal's horn that frisks on the British arms never existed.

And, speaking of horses, it is strange that centaurs should figure in the mythology of a country like Luzon; but a mile from the church at Mariveles is a hot spring beside which lived a creature that was half-horse and half-man. As in ancient Greece, there is little doubt that a belief in this being came from the wonder excited by the first hors.e.m.e.n.

Sea-eagles in the East are large and powerful, and are believed to have long memories. According to report, a man living near Jala Jala once stole a nest of their young and carried it to his house. It was a year from that time before any retaliation was attempted. The birds then appeared above his premises, swooped down on his wife, clawed her face and beat her with their wings until she was half-dead; then picked up her babe and carried it away before the eyes of the helpless parents. Next year they came again, and another infant, a few months old, was stolen. The man tracked them to their nest, which had been built high on a cliff that no one had ever scaled before. Nerved by grief and anger, he climbed it. In the nest were the skeletons of his children. As he clung to the rock, hanging over a dizzy s.p.a.ce and looking on these sad relics, the father bird came swooping from the sky and began to strike at him with claws and wings. In the face of such an a.s.sault the man could not descend in safety. Death was sure. He could only hope to kill his enemy, too. As the bird drew near he leaped from the rock, caught the eagle about the neck, and the two plunged down to death together.

An animal G.o.d especially to be feared is Calapnitan, king of the bats. He is so powerful and capable of mischief that in exploring a cave where bats are likely to have congregated the natives will speak in the most respectful terms of this deity, for he would be sure to hear them if they spoke flippantly of him, and might swoop from the cave roof and whip their eyes out with his leathern wings or tear them with his claws. Hence they bow their heads and speak with reverence of the Lord Calapnitan's cave, the Lord Calapnitan's stalact.i.te, even recognizing his temporary owners.h.i.+p of their clothing, arms, lights, and so on, and alluding to their own jackets as the Lord Calapnitan's. By carefully refraining in this manner from giving offence the Filipinos have succeeded in keeping their skins entire while guiding white travellers through the caverns in their islands.

Later Religious Myths and Miracles

Among stories that date no farther back than the Spanish conquest we find the usual tales of sacred springs, of visions, and of blessed objects. The Church of the Holy Infant, in the city of Cebu, contains an image of the Christ child, about fifteen inches in height, carved in ebony, preserved in much state and loaded with a profusion of ornament. The priests tell you that it was made in heaven, thrown to the earth, and found in 1565 by a soldier who recovered from an illness when he touched it. It was taken to the convent in Cebu, where the clergy emplaced it with great ceremony, and where on the 20th of January in every year it is dressed in a field marshal's regalia, receives a field marshal's salute, and is wors.h.i.+pped by thousands of pilgrims from all parts of the archipelago. So many women wrought themselves into an insane frenzy during these January feasts that their sacred dances, which were once a part of the ceremonies, had to be stopped. When the town was burned this statue saved itself from the flames, as did the bamboo cross near the church, which is said to be the same that was erected by the monk, Martin de Rada, on the day when the Spanish landed, more than three centuries ago. Matter-of-fact historians allow that the figure of the child may have been left there by Magellan. It worked miracles of a surprising character for years after his death, and the first settlement in Cebu was called The City of the Most Holy Name of Jesus in its honor. The customary discrepancies between the piety and the practice of the conquerors existed in the Philippines, as in the Antilles. They slew the natives until the survivors threw up their hands and professed the right religion; then they shot twenty-four thousand Chinese who had settled in and about Cebu, thus reducing themselves to a wretched state, for these Spaniards had depended on the Chinese as their servants, cooks, farmers, laborers, shoemakers, and tailors. It is worthy of note that other missionaries had shown activity, but with less result, for their methods had been more conciliatory. The Mahometanism that had been introduced by Moslem preachers from Arabia got no farther than Sulu, and the Confucianism imported by Chinamen seems to have obtained no permanent hold. Through all changes the Holy Child remained uninjured, and he continues his good work to this day.

When the Sulu pirates had fallen upon a year of such bad business that they reaped a profit of barely fifty per cent, on their investment in s.h.i.+ps and weapons, there was great discontent among them. Prizes were few and defeats occasional. Looking back on their highest hill, as they sailed away, and fearing that when they returned it might be with but half a cargo of gold and rum and Christians, so many of them wept for the misery of this thought that to this day the height is known as Buat Timantangis, or Mount of Tears. In one dull season, when the pirates were almost mutinous because of their continued ill-fortune, it occurred to one of the captains that an image to which the Christians prayed so earnestly and with such good effect might do as much for him as for some other natives. In his barbarian mind there was no absurdity in trying to persuade a gentle Virgin or a pure-minded Saint to deliver into his hands the goods and persons of those who knelt before their effigies. A sacred image was "good medicine" for Spaniards and Tagalogs, and should, therefore, be good medicine for Mahometans. Thus, he bethought him of the statue now known as the Virgin of Antipolo, that came from Spain by way of Mexico in charge of early missionaries. To think was to act. He raided the village where it had been enshrined and attempted to carry it off; but the statue had warned the faithful of its peril, and the marauders were met and driven off by a powerful force. The Virgin of Antipolo became one of the most influential of all the guardians of the islands, and to this day is especially besought by mothers who ask for her intercession on behalf of their sickly children. Holy water taken from her shrine will cure the sufferer, and the mother then performs a public penance in thankfulness. Before the American arrival, with its sudden imposition of new ideas on an old society, it was no uncommon thing to see on Good Friday a company of the richest women in Manila, poorly attired and with bare feet, dragging through the streets a heavy cross thirty feet in length. This was in fulfilment of vows they had made at the shrine of Antipolo.

This Virgin of Antipolo is likewise known as Our Lady of Good Voyage and Peace. She arrived from Mexico in a state galleon in 1626. On the voyage she calmed a storm so quickly that the priests proclaimed her special sanct.i.ty, and ordered her to be received in Manila with salutes of bells and guns. While the Jesuits were building a church for her she would often descend from her temporary altar and stand in an antipolo tree (Astocarpus incisa). People cut pieces from this tree for charms against disease and misfortune, until Father Salazar ordered that the trunk should be its pedestal. In an early rebellion the Chinese insurgents threw the statue into the fire. Flames were all about it, yet not a hair, not a thread of lace was singed, and the body of bra.s.s was unmarked by smoke. Angered at this defiance of their power, a Chinaman stabbed it in the face, and, curiously, the wound remains to this day in protest against the savagery that incited it. When for a second time the Virgin pa.s.sed unscathed through a conflagration the Spanish infantry bore her on their shoulders about the streets, shouting in the joy of her protection. A galleon having been endangered by rocks and bars in Manila Bay, the captain borrowed this statue, prayed that it would secure the safety of his s.h.i.+p, and, to the wonder of all, his vessel rode proudly up to the city gates, for the Virgin had ordered that the rocks should sink deeper beneath the sea. Twice afterward she did a like service to captains who borrowed the figure as a safeguard on the long voyage to Mexico and back, for each time she suppressed great storms. At the time of the a.s.sault on Manila by the Dutch she a.s.sisted in the defeat of the strangers, though St. Mark was a.s.sociated with her in the victory. He had told the governor in a dream that success should attend the Spanish arms if his people would carry the Virgin into the fight. This was done, and the Dutch lost three s.h.i.+ps with their cargoes. She was finally domiciled in the town of Antipolo, which, beside being famous as a shrine, has been one of the most noted resorts for brigands in the Philippines. The village of four thousand people subsists largely on the money spent by pilgrims to her church.

Every family in the Christian communities has a little statue of the Virgin or of a patron saint, to which prayers are addressed. Occasionally as much as a thousand dollars will be paid for one of these images, for some have more power than others. When Tondo caught fire and was reduced to ashes, the houses of mat and bamboo burning like paper, one thing alone survived the flames: a wooden statue of Mary. This token of a special watch upon the figure immediately raised its importance, and it was attired in the dress and ornaments of gold in which it may now be seen. Not all the domestic saints are brilliantly dressed or originally expensive. One Filipino family wors.h.i.+pped a portrait of Garibaldi that adorned the cover of a raisin box, while a native elsewhere was found on his knees before a picture from an American comic paper that represented President Cleveland attired as a monk and wearing a tin halo. Both of these pictures had been placed on altars, and candles were burned before them.

Another statue of great power is in the church at Majajay. It was sent there from Spain in charge of the friars, and is especially besought by invalids, for it is a general belief that whosoever will reach the church with breath enough remaining in him to recite certain prayers before this image shall have fresh lease of life; yea, though he were at his last gasp.

Some of the attacks made on the friars in the Philippines have been construed into attacks on the Church, but this is wrong. For the good of the Church, no less than of the people, it is desired to purge the islands of these ancient offenders. They have used religion as a cloak for evil, have encouraged, in private, vices they preached against in public, have availed themselves of famines and other distresses to force money from the poor, and have fathered as many half-castes as the Spanish soldiers have. As to their offspring, Filipino wives have quieted jealous husbands by a.s.suring them that the appearance of a European complexion in a hitherto brown family was a special favor from St. Peter,--a miracle ordered by the keeper of heaven as a reward for piety and good works. Hence, one hears much of St. Peter's children in the Philippines. Some of the white inhabitants have nevertheless been conspicuous for virtue. Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, for example, the first ruler of the islands, was so good that for years after his death his body, now in the St. Augustine Monastery, Manila, underwent no decay or change, but was like that of a man in sleep.

Alitagtag, north of Bauan, became in 1595 a resort of ghosts and devils that congregated about a spring near the village, so that the people were afraid to go there for water. A native headman took wood from a deserted house, made a cross of it, and set it up near the spring to spell away the fiends. As the people still feared, a woman of courage ventured near the place to find that a stream of cold, pure water was flowing from one of the arms of the cross. To further a.s.sure the people that the evil spirits had been mastered the cross arose from the earth and stalked about the fields, surrounded by bright lights. Thereupon the clergy ordered that it should be adored, and from that time it became an object of wors.h.i.+p, healing diseases, dispelling plagues, and killing locusts. When the priests at Bauan announced that they intended to move the cross to Lake Bombon, the priest of Taal, being jealous of his brothers in the other town, hired some natives to steal it and take it to his house. No sooner had the men a.s.sembled for this purpose than sheets of green fire fell about the cross, defending it from their approach, and in a frenzy of contrition they ran back, solemnly vowing that they would never make a similar attempt again. The cross was, therefore, taken to Bauan, where it did service for the people by terrorizing a band of pirates and by stopping an eruption of the Taal volcano in 1611. This peak of Taal had been a resort of devils from time immemorial, and it had been a frequent duty of the Church to pray them into silence. In the year just named Father Albuquerque headed a procession that ascended the mountain for this purpose. Near the summit he paused and lifted the cup containing the blood of Christ. Dreadful noises were heard, like the laughter of ten thousand fiends, in vaults below. Then, with a groan and crash, the earth split and two craters appeared, one filled with boiling sulphur, the other with green water. The cross was sent for. It was brought by four hundred natives. When it was put into the priest's hands he lifted it toward the sky and all united in prayer. During this pet.i.tion, while every head was bent and all eyes were shut, the craters softly closed and Taal was as it had been before. Yet the demons still linger about the mountain. Not many years ago an Englishman tunnelled the peak for sulphur. The fiends of the volcano shook the roof down on his head and he perished. In May it has been a custom to hold a feast in honor of this cross, if the natives furnish the necessary candles and raise ten dollars for the officiating priest.

Bangi, in Ilocos Norte, had a shrine in which was the image of a child with a lamb. Herbs pressed against it would cure all diseases. For years a dispute was carried on between clerical factions as to whether it represented St. John the Baptist or Christ. Bishop Miguel Garcia, having undressed it and examined it thoroughly, decided it to be a Chinese idol. Thereupon it was broken and burned as a thing unholy.

Our Lady of Casaysay, in Batangas, is so esteemed that s.h.i.+ps salute her in pa.s.sing. She was found by a fisherman in his net. He took her to a cave, not knowing what to make of his strange find, and intending to keep her there probably as a treasure not to be shared by his neighbors. She astonished and disappointed him by proclaiming herself with flas.h.i.+ng lights of beautiful color and with loud music. As these demonstrations frightened the peaceable rustics, the Virgin left her cave, visited a native woman, spoke kindly to her, and was thereupon provided with a shrine, where she might be adored with proper ceremony.

The statue of St. Joaquin at Gusi is remarkable because every year it runs away and spends two weeks with its wooden wife, the figure of St. Ann, at Molo.

Manila once had a saint that wagged its head approvingly at certain points in the sermon. This conduct drove so many women into hysterics, and crowded the church so dangerously with people who went to see the miracle, that the archbishop discountenanced its action, and ordered that it should be quiet thereafter. Quiet was easily secured by cutting the string attached to the saint's neck. The padre was accustomed to pull this during his discourse whenever he wished his congregation to believe that the saints approved his eloquence or endorsed his doctrine.

Holy water from the Conception district of Panay saves life, and San Pascual Bailon cures barrenness. A Manila milkman who was punished for selling watered milk expressed surprise at the complaints of his customers, because no wrong had been committed, inasmuch as he had used nothing but holy water, which was far superior to milk. Water from the prison well at Iloilo was held at so high a value that the prison-keeper made a fortune from it, as it was given out that Christ and the Virgin had been seen bathing in the well. Our Lady of the Holy Waters presides over the hot springs below Maquiling Mountain, an old crater. Another popular place of pilgrimage is the shrine at Tagbauang, near Iloilo, where illnesses are cured at a high ma.s.s in January.

One of the last recorded appearances of the Virgin was in 1884, when a band of robbers in Tayabas killed a plantation manager, wounded several laborers, and ransacked the house of the owner. While in one of the bedrooms tying clothes, jewelry, and other loot into parcels for removal, the Virgin appeared, and standing in the door looked with severity and distress on the bandits. They immediately left their plunder and ran pell-mell from the building. Some of these robbers were arrested, but the Virgin had compa.s.sion on them for leaving the proceeds of their raid, so none was garroted or even sentenced. Some go so far as to say that the Virgin had nothing to do with their escape from punishment, alleging that the officers of the law had conspired with them, and that the Spanish courts were even worse than those of a land that shall be nameless in respect of their slowness and the facilities they offered for adjournments, retrials, and appeals on grounds that if presented in any other cause than that of a breaker of the law would be laughed to scorn. Filipino bandits often wear medals of the Virgin and saints to protect them from harm, and some are made bold by confidence in their protection. It is a belief of theirs that they will never be punished for any crime they may commit in Easter week, for the rather obscure reason that Christ pardoned the thief on the cross on Good Friday.

A curious chapel on a bluff near Pasig, overlooking the river of that name, has the form of a paG.o.da. It was built as a thank-offering by a Chinaman who, having been endangered by a crocodile, and having called on men and joss without receiving an answer, prayed volubly to the Christians' G.o.d as he swam toward the sh.o.r.e, and promised to erect a chapel in return for his life. His prayer was answered, for the crocodile was turned to stone, and may now be seen in the bed of the stream, while the grateful Mongol kept his word, and also joined the church.

Bankiva, the Philippine Pied Piper

Of nearly six hundred species of birds in the Philippines the jungle fowl, or bankiva, is best known, and is both killed and domesticated. Unlike the dove, it does not understand human speech, but it has a power over our kind that is exercised by no other animal. Once a year the spirits grant to it this power of charming, in order that both spirits and birds may be revenged on men, their constant enemies. When that day comes the Luzon mother tremblingly gathers her little ones about her and warns them not to leave their door, for young ears heed the strange, sweet music of the fowl's voice, which grown people cannot hear. On that day the bird sings with a new note, and the flock of bankivas choose the largest, handsomest of their number to lead the march of children. On the edge of the village he gives his song, and every toddler runs delightedly to see what causes the music. Babes respond with soft, cooing notes, and will go on hands and knees if they can. They find the bankivas gathered in a little ring, spreading their tails and wings, dancing and singing in harmony, the head bird setting the air. When the children have gathered, they, too, begin to dance and sing, following the birds as they go deeper and deeper into the wood. Night falls, and with a harsh cry the bankivas fly away in all directions. The children are as if awakened from a sleep. They do not know where they are, and cannot tell which way to turn. Jungles and swamps are about them, man-eating crocodiles are watching from the water, poisonous and strangling snakes are gliding about the brush, the pythons that loop themselves from overhanging limbs are sometimes thrice the length of a man. Dread and danger are on every hand. And at home the mothers sit crying. Sometimes, though rarely, a man or woman totters back to a village bearing marks of great age, and is sure that he or she left there only the night before. These wanderers do not know where they have been. They remember only that the bankiva sang sweetly, and they followed it, as the children of Hamelin followed the pied piper.

The Crab Tried to Eat the Moon