This paper is based on a collection of Philippine folk-tales recently
published by the Field Museum of Natural History. [1] The material
appearing in that publication was gathered by the writer during a
stay of sixteen months with the Tinguian, a powerful pagan tribe
inhabiting the mountain districts of Abra, Ilocos Sur, and Norte, of
Northern Luzon. In social organization, government, manner of house
building, and many other details of material culture this tribe differs
radically from the neighboring Igorot. Observation has also led me
to the conclusion that the religious organization and ceremonies of
this people have reached a higher development than is found among the
near-by tribes, and that this complexity decreases as we penetrate
toward the interior or to the south. In the main the folk-tales are
closely associated with the religious beliefs of the present day,
and hence it seems unlikely that they will be found, in anything
approaching their present form, far outside the districts dominated
by this tribe. Nevertheless, isolated incidents corresponding to those
of neighboring peoples, or even of distant lands, occur several times.
In the following pages an attempt has been made to bring together the
culture of this people, as it appears in the myths, and to contrast
it to present day conditions and beliefs. In this way we may hope to
gain a clearer insight into their mental life, and to secure a better
idea of the values they attach to certain of their activities than
is afforded us by actual observation or by direct inquiry. It is also
possible that the tales may give us a glimpse of the early conditions
under which this people developed, of their life and culture before
the advent of the European.
It should be noted at the outset that no attempt is here made to
reconstruct an actual historical period. As will appear later, a
part of the material is evidently very old; later introductions--to
which approximate dates may be assigned--have assumed places of great
importance; while the stories doubtless owe much to the creative
imaginations of successive story tellers.
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, [2] 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. [3]