Philippine Folk-Tales eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 222 pages of information about Philippine Folk-Tales.

Philippine Folk-Tales eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 222 pages of information about Philippine Folk-Tales.

Mebu’yan is now chief of a town called Banua Mebu’yan ("Mebu’yan’s town"), where she takes care of all dead babies, and gives them milk from her Breasts.  Mebu’yan is ugly to look at, for her whole body is covered with nipples.  All nursing children who still want the milk, go directly, when they die, to Banua Mebu’yan, instead of to Gimokudan, and remain there with Mebu’yan until they stop taking milk from her breast.  Then they go to their own families in Gimokudan, where they can get rice, and “live” very well.

All the spirits stop at Mebu’yan’s town, on their way to Gimokudan.  There the spirits wash all their joints in the black river that runs through Banua Mebu’yan, and they wash the tops of their heads too.  This bathing (pamalugu [47]) is for the purpose of making the spirits feel at home, so that they will not run away and go back to their own bodies.  If the spirit could return to its body, the body would get up and be alive again.

Story of Lumabat and Wari

Tuglay and Tuglibung [48] had many children.  One of them was called Lumabat.  There came a time when Lumabat quarrelled with his sister and was very angry with her.  He said, “I will go to the sky, and never come back again.”

So Lumabat started for the sky-country, and many of his brothers and sisters went with him.  A part of their journey lay over the sea, and when they had passed the sea, a rock spoke to them and said, “Where are you going?”

In the beginning, all the rocks and plants and the animals could talk [49] with the people.  Then one boy answered the rock, “We are going to the sky-country.”

As soon as he had spoken, the boy turned into a rock.  But his brothers and sisters went on, leaving the rock behind.

Presently a tree said, “Where are you going?”

“We are going to the sky,” replied one of the girls.

Immediately the girl became a tree.  Thus, all the way along the journey, if any one answered, he became a tree, or stone, or rock, according to the nature of the object that put the question.

By and by the remainder of the party reached the border of the sky.  They had gone to the very end of the earth, as far as the horizon.  But here they had to stop, because the horizon kept moving up and down (supa-supa).  The sky and the earth would part, and then close together again, just like the jaws of an animal in eating.  This movement of the horizon began as soon as the people reached there.

There were many young men and women, and they all tried to jump through the place where the sky and the earth parted.  But the edges of the horizon are very sharp, like a kampilan, [50] and they came together with a snap whenever anybody tried to jump through; and they cut him into two pieces.  Then the parts of his body became stones, or grains of sand.  One after another of the party tried to jump through, for nobody knew the fate of the one who went before him.

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Project Gutenberg
Philippine Folk-Tales from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.