IV
I'll teach you "Good morning"
And "How do you do?"
Or "I am well, thank you,"
And "How are you too?"
"Polly is hungry" or
"It's a fine day."
These and much more
I am sure you could say.
But now I must go,
So say with your bow,
"Comusta pari?
Pericos tao."
Quicoy and the Ongloc
This story is known generally in the southern Islands. The Ongloc is feared by the children just as some little boys and girls fear the Bogy Man. The tale is a favorite one among the children and they believe firmly in the fate of Quicoy.
Little Quicoy's name was Francisco, but every one called him Quicoy, which, in Visayan, is the pet name for Francisco. He was a good little boy and helped his mother grind the corn and pound the rice in the big wooden bowl, but one night he was very careless. While playing in the corner with the cat he upset the jar of lubi lana, and all the oil ran down between the bamboo strips in the floor and was lost. There was none left to put in the glass and light, so the whole family had to go to bed in the dark.
Quicoy's mother was angry. She whipped him with her chinela and then opened the window and cried:
"Ongloc of the mountains!
Fly in through the door.
Catch Quicoy and eat him,
He is mine no more."
Quicoy was badly frightened when he heard this, for the Ongloc is a big black man with terrible long teeth, who all night goes searching for the bad boys and girls that he may change them into little cocoanuts and put them on a shelf in his rock house in the mountains to eat when he is hungry.
So when Quicoy went to his bed in the corner he pulled the matting over his head and was so afraid that he did not go to sleep for a long time.
The next morning he rose very early and went down to the spring where the boys get the water to put in the bamboo poles and carry home. Some boys were already there, and he told them what had taken place the night before. They were all sorry that his mother had called the Ongloc, but they told him not to be afraid for they would tell him how he could be forever safe from that terrible man.