Filipino Popular Tales

Filipino Popular Tales

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Filipino Popular Tales, by Dean S.
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Title: Filipino Popular Tales
Author: Dean S. Fansler
Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8299] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 4, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FILIPINO
POPULAR TALES ***

Produced by Jeroen Hellingman

Filipino Popular Tales
Collected and Edited with Comparative Notes
By
Dean S. Fansler,
1921

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 Märchen 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 Japan, 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
relationship 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 substitutions 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