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TITLE: FILIPINO POPULAR TALES
AUTHOR: DEAN S. FANSLER
EBOOK: E05672 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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 Maerchen
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 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 Maerchen 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
	(c) The Story of King Palmarin 98
12.	(a) The Three Brothers 116
	(b) Three Brothers of Fortune 118
	(c) Pablo and the Princess 120
	(d) Legend of Prince Oswaldo 122
13.	(a) The Rich and the Poor 137
	(b) Lucas the Rope-Maker 140
14.	(a) The King and the Dervish 144
	(b) The Mysterious Book 145
15.	The Miraculous Cow 150

16.	The Clever Husband and Wife 152
17.	The Three Brothers 155
18.	Juan and his Adventures 171
19.	Juan wearing a Monkey's Skin 178
20.	(a) How Salaksak became Rich 183
	(b) Clever Juan and Envious Diego 186
	(c) Ruined because of Invidiousness 188
	(d) The Two Friends 190
	(e) Juan the Orphan 192
21.	Is he the Crafty Ulysses? 197
22.	The Reward of Kindness 207
23.	Pedro and Satan 211
24.	The Devil and the Guachinango 214
25.	Juan Sadut 223
26.	An Act of Kindness 227
27.	The Indolent Husband 231
28.	Cecilio, the Servant of Emilio 237
29.	Chonguita 244
30.	The Golden Lock 248
31.	Who is the Nearest Relative? 257
32.	With One Centavo Juan marries a Princess 262
33.	(a) The Three Humpbacks 265
	(b) The Seven Humpbacks 267
34.	(a) Respect Old Age 271
	(b) The Golden Rule 271
35.	Cochinango 276

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