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 m?rchen 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 [xi]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 [vii]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.
[viii]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.
