Filipino Popular Tales | Page 2

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 M?rchen 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 Fellows 75 10. (a) Juan Manalaksan 79 (b) Juan the Poor, who became Juan the King 81 11. (a) Lucas the Strong 89 (b) Juan and his Six Companions 92