For the purposes of our study, the tales have been roughly divided
into three parts. The first, which deals with the mythical period,
contains thirty-one tales of similar type in which the characters
are for the most part the same, although the last five tales do not
properly fit into the cycle, and the concluding story of Indayo is
evidently a recent account told in the form of the older relations.
In the second division are the ritualistic and explanatory myths,
the object of which seems to be to account for the origin of or way
of conducting various ceremonies; for the belief in certain spirits
and sacred objects; for the existence of the sun, moon, and other
natural phenomena; for the attainment of fire, food plants, birds
and domestic animals, as well as of magical jars and beads. Here it
should be noted that some of the most common and important beliefs
and ceremonies are, so far as is known, unaccompanied by any tales,
yet are known to all the population, and are preserved almost without
change from generation to generation.
Division three contains the ordinary stories with which parents amuse
their children or with which men and women while away the midday
hours as they lounge in the field houses, or when they stop on the
trail to rest and smoke.
None of the folk-tales are considered as the property of the tellers,
but only those of the third division are well known to the people in
general. Those of the first section are seldom heard except during the
dry season when the people gather around bonfires in various parts of
the village. To these go the men and women, the latter to spin cotton,
the former to make fish nets or to repair their tools and weapons. In
such a gathering there are generally one or more persons who entertain
their fellows with these tales. Such a person is not paid for his
services, but the fact that he knows "the stories of the first times"
makes him a welcome addition to the company and gives him an enviable
position in the estimation of his fellows.
The purely ritualistic tales, called _diams_, are learned word
by word by the mediums, [1] as a part of their training for their
positions, and are only recited while an animal is being stroked with
oil preparatory to its being sacrificed, or when some other gift is
about to be presented to the superior beings. The writer has recorded
these _diams_ from various mediums in widely separated towns and has
found them quite uniform in text and content. The explanatory tales
were likewise secured from the mediums, or from old men and women who
"know the customs." The stories of the last division are the most
frequently heard and, as already indicated, are told by all. It is
evident even to the casual reader that these show much more evidence
of outside influence than do the others; some, indeed, appear to have
been recently borrowed from the neighboring christianized Ilocano. [2]