Filipino Popular Tales Part 1

Filipino Popular Tales.

by Dean S. Fansler.

PREFACE.

The folk-tales in this volume, which were collected in the Philippines during the years from 1908 to 1914, have not appeared in print before. They are given to the public now in the hope that they will be no mean or uninteresting addition to the volumes of Oriental Marchen already in existence. The Philippine archipelago, from the very nature of its geographical position and its political history, cannot but be a significant field to the student of popular stories. Lying as it does at the very doors of China and j.a.pan, connected as it is ethnically with the Malayan and Indian civilizations, Occidentalized as it has been for three centuries and more, it stands at the junction of East and West. It is therefore from this point of view that these tales have been put into a form convenient for reference. Their importance consists in their relations.h.i.+p to the body of world fiction.

The language in which these stories are presented is the language in which they were collected and written down,--English. Perhaps no apology is required for not printing the vernacular herewith; nevertheless an explanation might be made. In the first place, the object in recording these tales has been a literary one, not a linguistic one. In the second place, the number of distinctly different languages represented by the originals might be baffling even to the reader interested in linguistics, especially as our method of approach has been from the point of view of cycles of stories, and not from the point of view of the separate tribes telling them. In the third place, the form of prose tales among the Filipinos is not stereotyped; and there is likely to be no less variation between two Visayan versions of the same story, or between a Tagalog and a Visayan, than between the native form and the English rendering. Clearly Spanish would not be a better medium than English: for to-day there is more English than Spanish spoken in the Islands; besides, Spanish never penetrated into the very lives of the peasants, as English penetrates to-day by way of the school-house. I have endeavored to offset the disadvantages of the foreign medium by judicious and painstaking directions to my informants in the writing-down of the tales. Only in very rare cases was there any modification of the original version by the teller, as a concession to Occidental standards. Whatever subst.i.tutions I have been able to detect I have removed. In practically every case, not only to show that these are bona fide native stories, but also to indicate their geographical distribution, I have given the name of the narrator, his native town, and his province. In many cases I have given, in addition, the source of his information. I am firmly convinced that all the tales recorded here represent genuine Filipino tradition so far as the narrators are concerned, and that nothing has been "manufactured" consciously.

But what is "native," and what is "derived"? The folklore of the wild tribes--Negritos, Bagobos, Igorots--is in its way no more "uncontaminated" than that of the Tagalogs, Pampangans, Zambals, Pangasinans, Ilocanos, Bicols, and Visayans. The traditions of these Christianized tribes present as survivals, adaptations, modifications, fully as many puzzling and fascinating problems as the popular lore of the Pagan peoples. It should be remembered, that, no matter how wild and savage and isolated a tribe may be, it is impossible to prove that there has been no contact of that tribe with the outside civilized world. Conquest is not necessary to the introduction of a story or belief. The crew of a Portuguese trading-vessel with a genial narrator on board might conceivably be a much more successful transmitting-medium than a thousand praos full of brown warriors come to stay. Clearly the problem of a.n.a.lyzing and tracing the story-literature of the Christianized tribes differs only in degree from that connected with the Pagan tribes. In this volume I have treated the problem entirely from the former point of view, since there has been hitherto a tendency to neglect as of small value the stories of the Christianized peoples. However, for ill.u.s.trative material I have drawn freely on works dealing with the non-Christian tribes, particularly in the case of stories that appear to be native; and I shall use the term "native" to mean merely "existent in the Islands before the Spaniards went there."

In the notes, I have attempted to answer for some of the tales the question as to what is native and what imported. I have not been able to reach a decision in the case of all, because of a lack of sufficient evidence. While the most obvious sources of importation from the Occident have been Spain and Portugal, the possibility of the introduction of French, Italian, and even Belgian stories through the medium of priests of those nationalities must not be overlooked. Furthermore, there is a no inconsiderable number of Basque sailors to be found on the small inter-island steamers that connect one end of the archipelago with the other. Even a very cursory glance at the tales in this collection reveals the fact that many of them are more or less close variants and a.n.a.logues of tales distributed throughout the world. How or when this material reached the Philippines is hard to say. The importation of Arabian stories, for example, might have been made over many routes. The Hindoo beast-tales, too, might have quite circled the globe in their progress from east to west, and thus have been introduced to the Filipinos by the Spaniards and Portuguese. Again, the germs of a number of widespread Marchen may have existed in the archipelago long before the arrival of the Europeans, and, upon the introduction of Occidental civilization and culture, have undergone a development entirely consistent with the development that took place in Europe, giving us as a result remarkably close a.n.a.logues of the Western tales. This I suspect to have been the case of some of our stories where, parallel with the localized popular versions, exist printed romances (in the vernacular) with the mediaeval flavor and setting of chivalry. To give a specific case: the Visayans, Bicols, and Tagalogs in the coast towns feared the raids of Mindanao Mussulmans long before white feet trod the sh.o.r.es of the Islands, and many traditions of conflicts with these pirates are embedded in their legends. The Spaniard came in the sixteenth century, bringing with him stories of wars between Christians and Saracens in Europe. One result of this close a.n.a.logy of actual historical situation was, I believe, a general tendency to levelling: that is, native traditions of such struggles took on the color of the Spanish romances; Spanish romances, on the other hand, which were popularized in the Islands, were very likely to be "localized." A maximum of caution and a minimum of dogmatism, then, are imperative, if one is to treat at all scientifically the relations.h.i.+p of the stories of a composite people like the Filipinos to the stories of the rest of the world.

A word might be added as to the nature of the tales. I have included only "hero tales, serious and droll," beast stories and fables, and pourquoi or "just-so" stories. Myths, legends, and fairy-tales (including all kinds of spirit and demon stories) I have purposely excluded, in order to keep the size of the volume within reasonable limits. I have, however, occasionally drawn upon my ma.n.u.script collection of these types to ill.u.s.trate a native superst.i.tion or custom.

Columbia University,

May, 1918.

FILIPINO POPULAR TALES

PART I

HERO TALES AND DROLLS.

TALE 1

SUAN'S GOOD LUCK.

Narrated by Macaria Garcia. The story is popular among the Pampangans.

There was once an old woman who had an only son named Suan. [2] Suan was a clever, sharp-witted boy. His mother sent him to school. Instead of going to school, however, Suan climbed up the tree that stood by the roadside. As soon as his mother had pa.s.sed by from the market, Suan hurried home ahead of her. When she reached home, he cried, "Mother, I know what you bought in the market to-day." He then told her, article by article. This same thing happened so repeatedly, that his mother began to believe in his skill as a diviner.

One day the ring of the datu's [3] daughter disappeared. All the people in the locality searched for it, but in vain. The datu called for volunteers to find the lost ring, and he offered his daughter's hand as a prize to the one who should succeed. Suan's mother heard of the proclamation. So she went to the palace and presented Suan to the datu.

"Well, Suan, to-morrow tell me where the ring is," said the datu.

"Yes, my lord, I will tell you, if you will give your soldiers over to me for to-night," Suan replied.

"You shall have everything you need," said the datu.

That evening Suan ordered the soldiers to stand around him in a semicircle. When all were ready, Suan pointed at each one of them, and said, "The ring is here, and nowhere else." It so happened that Suan fixed his eyes on the guilty soldier, who trembled and became pale. "I know who has it," said Suan. Then he ordered them to retire.

Late in the night this soldier came to Suan, and said, "I will get the ring you are in search of, and will give it to you if you will promise me my safety."

"Give it to me, and you shall be safe," said Suan.

Very early the next morning Suan came to the palace with a turkey in his arms. "Where is the ring?" the datu demanded. "Why, sir, it is in this turkey's intestines," Suan replied. The turkey was then killed, and the ring was found inside it.

"You have done very well, Suan. Now you shall have my daughter's hand,"

said the datu. So Suan became the princess's husband.

One day the datu proposed a bet with any one who wished to prove Suan's skill. Accordingly another datu came. He offered to bet seven cascos [4] of treasure that Suan could not tell the number of seeds that were in his orange. Suan did not know what to do. At midnight he went secretly to the cascos. Here he heard their conversation, and from it he learned the number of seeds in the orange.

In the morning Suan said boastfully, "I tell you, your orange has nine seeds." Thus Suan won the whole treasure.

Hoping to recover his loss, the datu came again. This time he had with him fourteen cascos full of gold. He asked Suan to tell him what was inside his golden ball. Suan did not know what to say. So in the dead of night he went out to the cascos, but he could learn nothing there. The next morning Suan was summoned into the presence of the two datus. He had no idea whatever as to what was in the ball; so he said scornfully, "Nonsense!"

"That is right, that is right!" shouted a man. "The ball contains nine cents." Consequently Suan won the fourteen cascos full of gold. From now on, n.o.body doubted Suan's merit.

Suan Eket.

Narrated by Manuel Reyes, a Tagalog from Rizal province. He heard the story from his grandfather.

Many years ago there lived in the country of Campao a boy named Suan. While this boy was studying in a private school, it was said that he could not p.r.o.nounce the letter x very well--he called it "eket." So his schoolmates nick-named him "Suan Eket."

Finally Suan left school, because, whenever he went there, the other pupils always shouted at him, "Eket, eket, eket!" He went home, and told his mother to buy him a pencil and a pad of paper. "I am the wisest boy in our town now," said he.

One night Suan stole his father's plough, and hid it in a creek near their house. The next morning his father could not find his plough.

"What are you looking for?" said Suan.

"My plough," answered his father.

"Come here, father! I will guess where it is." Suan took his pencil and a piece of paper. On the paper he wrote figures of various shapes. He then looked up, and said,--

"Ararokes, ararokes, Na na nakawes Ay na s'imburnales,"--

which meant that the plough had been stolen by a neighbor and hidden in a creek. Suan's father looked for it in the creek near their house, and found it. In great wonder he said, "My son is truly the wisest boy in the town." News spread that Suan was a good guesser.

One day as Suan was up in a guava-tree, he saw his uncle Pedro ploughing. At noon Pedro went home to eat his dinner, leaving the plough and the carabao [5] in the field. Suan got down from the tree and climbed up on the carabao's back. He guided it to a very secret place in the mountains and hid it there. When Pedro came back, he could not find his carabao. A man who was pa.s.sing by said, "Pedro, what are you looking for?"

"I am looking for my carabao. Somebody must have stolen it." "Go to Suan, your nephew," said the man. "He can tell you who stole your carabao." So Pedro went to Suan's house, and told him to guess who had taken his carabao.

Suan took his pencil and a piece of paper. On the paper he wrote some round figures. He then looked up, and said,