After the guachinango had liberated the devil, he immediately set out for the city. He had not been there three days when he met a group of soldiers crying that “he who could cure the princess should have her to wife.” The guachinango stopped the soldiers, and said that he could cure the princess. They took him before the king, where a written agreement was made. If he could not cure the princess in three days, he should lose his life; but if he cured her by the end of the third day, he should marry her. The guachinango was then conducted to the room of the princess. When he approached her, he said to the devil that he had come. “You must leave the princess now; for, if you don’t, I shall be executed.” But the devil refused to leave, because he wanted to get revenge. He further told the guachinango that he wanted him to die, for then his soul would go to hell.
The guachinango became more and more hopeless. On the morning of the third day he thought of a good plan to get rid of his enemy. He asked the king to order all the bells of the neighboring churches to be tolled, while every one in the palace was to cry out loud, “Here she comes!” While all this noise was going on, the guachinango approached the princess, and told the devil that the old woman was coming with her cintas. When the devil heard this, he was terribly frightened, and left the princess and disappeared. The next day the guachinango was married to the princess.
Notes.
From the testimony of the narrator, this capital story appears to have been known in Pampanga for some time. The incident of the demon entering the body of the princess, and then leaving at the request of one who has befriended him, occurs in a Tagalog story also, which I will give for the purpose of comparison. While the story is more of a fairy-tale than a Märchen proper, it appears to be a variant of our [No. 24]. Significant differences between the two will be noted, however. The Tagalog story was collected and written down for me by Manuel Reyes, a native of Manila. It runs as follows:
Mabait and the Duende.
Menguita, a king of Cebu, had two slaves,—Mabait and Masama. Mabait was honest and industrious, while Masama was envious and lazy. Mabait did nearly all of the hard work in the palace, so he was admired very much by the king. Masama, who was addicted to gambling, envied Mabait.
One night, while Mabait was asleep, a duende[4] awakened him, and said, “I have seen how you labor here patiently and honestly. I want to be your friend.”
Mabait was amazed and frightened. He looked at the duende carefully, and saw that it resembled a very small man with long hair and a white beard. It was about a foot high. It had on a red shirt, a pair of green trousers, a golden cap, and a pair of black shoes. At last Mabait answered in a trembling voice, “I don’t want to be a friend of an evil spirit.”
“I am not evil, I am a duende.”
“I don’t know what duendes are, so I don’t want to be your friend.”