Now, this old woman had three daughters. When she reached home with the bear-like man, she called her eldest daughter, and said, “Now, my daughter, here is a man who delivered me from prison. As I can do nothing to reward him for his great kindness, I want you to take him for your husband.”
The daughter replied, “Mother, why have you brought this ugly man here? No, I cannot marry him. I can find a better husband.”
On hearing this harsh reply, the mother could not say a word. She called her second daughter, and explained her wishes to her; but the younger daughter refused, just as her sister had refused, and she made fun of the man.
The mother was very much disappointed, but she was unable to persuade her daughters to marry her benefactor. Finally she determined to try her youngest daughter. When the daughter heard her mother’s request, she said, “Mother, if to have me marry this man is the only way by which you can repay him for his kindness, I’ll gladly marry him.” The mother was very much pleased, but the two older daughters were very angry with their sister. The mother told the man of the decision of her youngest daughter, and a contract was signed between them. But before they were married, the bear-like man asked permission from the girl to be absent for one more year to finish his duty. She consented to his going, and gave him half her ring as a memento.
At the end of the year, which was the last of his seven years’ wandering, the bear-like man went to the Devil, and told him that he had finished his duty. The Devil said, “You have beaten me. Now that you have performed your seven years’ wandering, and have spent the money honestly, let us exchange clothes again!” So the man received back his soldierlike suit, which made him look like a knight, and the Devil took back his bear-skin.
Then the man returned to Clara’s[3] house. When his arrival was announced to the family, the two older daughters dressed themselves in their best, for they thought that he was a suitor come to see them; but when the man showed the ring and asked for the hand of Clara’s youngest daughter, the two nearly died with vexation, while the youngest daughter was very happy.
Notes.
This story is a variant of Grimm, No. 101, “Bear-Skin,” which it follows fairly closely from the point where the hero makes his pact with the Devil. The bibliography of this cycle is fully given in Bolte-Polívka, 2 : 427–435, to which I have nothing to add except this story itself! Our version is the only one so far recorded from the Orient, and there can be no doubt that it is derived directly from Europe. Ralston and Moe seem to detect a relationship between this cycle and a Hindoo saga translated into Chinese in the seventh century, and from the Chinese into French in the middle of the nineteenth century, by the French orientalist Stanislas Julien; but Bolte is of the opinion (p. 435) that there is probably no connection between the two. In any case, to judge from recorded variants, the Tagalog story is an importation from the Occident.
And yet there are not a few deviations in our version from the norm, if Grimm’s tale may be considered representative of the cycle. The most important of these is the opening, which is one form of the “Promised Child” opening (see Macculloch, 415 ff.). This formula of a childless couple finally promising in despair to let their child serve even the Devil if they are granted offspring, or to be satisfied with an animal-child or some other monstrosity, is a favorite one in Filipino Märchen (cf. [Nos. 3] and variants, [19] and variant, and [23]), and its use here may have been influenced by the beginning of the next tale.
Other differences may be noted briefly: (1) The compact made between the hero and the Devil does not include the characteristic prohibitions in the European versions; namely, that the hero is not to comb his hair, wash himself, trim his beard, etc., during his seven years of wandering. The Devil seems to rely merely on his bear-suit, which he makes the hero wear, to produce insurmountable difficulties. It may be that the prohibitions mentioned above were omitted because they involved conditions wholly foreign to Filipino conception. The natives take great pride in their hair, and always dress it carefully, are scrupulously clean personally, and are beardless! I can cite no parallel in folk-tales for the condition substituted; i.e., if the wanderer does good with his money, the Devil will have no power over him at the end of the seven years, while, if he spends it extravagantly and foolishly, he goes to hell. Perhaps none need be sought outside of actual experience. (2) The hero is supplied with money from a large bag which the Devil gives him, not from the inexhaustible pockets of a magic green coat, as in Grimm. The mention of the hero’s soldier-suit, by the way, since nothing has been said earlier in the story of his having followed the profession of arms, is likely a reminiscence of the characteristic opening of the European versions, where it is a poor soldier who has the experience with the Devil. (3) The person ransomed by the hero in our story is an old woman instead of an old man. (4) The two disappointed sisters do not kill themselves, and hence the Devil does not reappear at the end of the story,—as he does in Grimm,—and say, “I have now got two souls in the place of thy one!”