Filipino Popular Tales

by Unknown

Notes.

These two stories belong to the “Magic Ring” cycle, and are connected with the well-known “Aladdin” tale. Antti Aarne (pp. 1–82) reconstructs the original formula of this type, which was about as follows:—

A youth buys the life of a dog and a cat, liberates a serpent, and receives from its parent a wishing-stone, by means of which he builds himself a magnificent castle and wins as his wife a princess. But a thief steals the stone and removes castle and wife over the sea. Then the dog and the cat swim across the ocean, catch a mouse, and compel it to fetch the stone from out of the mouth of the thief. Upon their return journey, cat and dog quarrel, and the stone falls into the sea. After they have obtained it again with the help of a frog, they bring it to their master, who wishes his castle and wife back once more.

In nearly every detail our stories vary from this norm: (1) The hero does not buy the life of any animals, (2) he does not acquire the charm from a grateful serpent that he has unselfishly saved from death, (3) the dog does not appear at all, (4) castle and wife are not transported beyond the sea, (5) the cat does not serve the hero voluntarily out of gratitude, (6) the hero himself journeys to recover his stolen charm. And yet there can be no doubt of the connection of our stories with this cycle. The acquirement of a charm, through the help of which the hero performs a difficult task under penalty of death, and thus wins the hand of a ruler’s daughter; the theft of the charm and the disappearance of the wife; the search, which is finally brought to a successful close through the help of a cat and the king of the rats; the recovery of wife and charm, and the death of the hero’s enemies, these details in combination are unmistakable proofs.

Most of the characteristic details, however, of the “Magic Ring” cycle are to be found in the Philippines, although they are lacking in these two stories. For instance, in [No. 26] the hero buys the life of a snake for five cents, and is rewarded by the king of the serpents with a magic wishing-cloth (cf. E. Steere, 403). In a Visayan pourquoi story, “Why Dogs wag their Tails” (see JAFL 20 : 98–100), we have a variant of the situation of the helpful dog and cat carrying a ring across a body of water, the quarrel in mid-stream, and the loss of the charm. In the same volume (pp. 117–118) is to be found a Tagalog folk-version of the “Aladdin” tale.[2]

Neither “Juan Manalaksan” nor “Juan the Poor, who became Juan the King,” can be traced, I believe, to any of the hundred and sixty-three particular forms of the story cited by Aarne. The differences in detail are too many. The last part of Pedroso’s Portuguese folk-tale, No. xxx, is like (b), in that the hero himself seeks the thief, takes along with him a cat, is recognized by the thief and imprisoned, and by means of the cat threatens the king of the rats, who recovers the charm for him. But the first part is entirely different: the charm is an apple obtained from a hind, and the hero’s wife is not stolen along with the charm. No Spanish version has been recorded. It is not impossible that the story in the Philippines is prehistoric. “Juan Manalaksan,” which the narrator took down exactly as it was told to him, clearly dates back to a time when the tribe had its own native datu government, possibly to a time even before the Pampangans migrated to the Philippines. The whole “equipment” of this story is primitive to a degree. Moreover, the nature of the charm in both stories—a piece of glass and an oval stone instead of the more usual ring—points to the primitiveness of our versions, as does likewise the fact that the charm is not stolen from the hero by his wife, but by some other person (see Aarne, pp. 43, 45).

For further discussions of this cycle of folk-tales, and its relation to the Arabian literary version, see Aarne, 61 et seq. Compare also Macculloch, 201–202, 237–238; Groome, 218–220; Clouston’s “Variants of Button’s Supplemental Arabian Nights,” pp. 564–575; Bolte-Polívka, 2 : 451–458; Benfey, 1 : 211 ff. Add to Aarne’s and Bolte’s lists Wratislaw, No. 54. See also Dähnhardt, 4 : 147–160.

In conclusion, I may add in the way of an Appendix, as it were, a brief synopsis of a Tagalog romance entitled “Story of Edmundo, Son of Merced in the Kingdom of France; taken from a novela and composed by one who enjoys writing the Tagalog language. Manila 1909.” This verse-form of a story at bottom the same as our two folk-tales is doubtless much more recent than our folk-tales themselves, and is possibly based on them directly, despite the anonymous author’s statement as to the unnamed novela that was his source. In the following summary of the “Story of Edmundo,” the numbers in parentheses refer to stanzas of the original Tagalog text.