Filipino Popular Tales | Page 2

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 analyzing 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 illustrative 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 analogues 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 Märchen 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 analogues 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 shores 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
analogy 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 relationship 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 manuscript collection of these
types to illustrate a native superstition or custom.
Columbia University,
May, 1918.

Contents.
I. HERO TALES AND DROLLS. 1. (a) Suan's Good Luck 1 (b) Suan
Eket 2 2. The Charcoal-Maker who became King 10 3. The Story of
Carancal 17 4. (a) Suac and his Adventures 29 (b) The Three
Friends,--the Monkey, the Dog, and the Carabao 31 5. (a) How Suan
became Rich 35 (b) The King's Decisions 37 6. (a) The Four Blind
Brothers 42 (b) Juan the Blind Man 43 (c) Teofilo the Hunchback, and
the Giant 46 (d) Juan and the Buringcantada 47 (e) The Manglalabas 49
7. (a) Sagacious Marcela 53 (b) King Tasio 55 8. (a) The Story of
Zaragoza 64 (b) Juan the Peerless Robber 69 9. The Seven Crazy