After a short time the crow returned. He came before God, who spoke to him thus: “What made you so long? Why did you not return sooner from the earth?” As the crow had no good reason to give for his delay, he said nothing: he simply bent his head.
God punished the crow by putting a chain on his legs. So that to-day the crow cannot walk: all he can do is to hop from place to place. The dove, which was faithful to God, is now the favorite pet bird the world over. The red color on her feet may be seen to-day as evidence that she performed her duty.
Notes.
None of our stories presents the exact sequence of events found in other folk-tales of the sending-out of the raven and the dove after the Deluge to measure the depth of the water; but there can be no doubt that the Zambal story (c) derives immediately from one of these. The Visayan account mentions a flood, but not the Deluge. In the fact that the cause of the great inundation is a quarrel between two chief Pagan deities, there seems to be preserved an old native tradition. In the Pampangan story not only is the curse of the crow attributed to a Pagan deity, Sinukuan, but the occasion of the bird’s downfall is a pestilence. There is no mention whatever of a flood, nor is the dove alluded to.
Dähnhardt (1 : 283–287) has discussed a number of folk-tales and traditions of the punishment of the raven and the rewarding of the dove. These are for the most part associated with popular accounts of events immediately after the Deluge. Two that seem to be nearly related to our versions may be reproduced here in English:—
(Polish story of the dove.) When Noah had despatched a dove from the Ark, the bird alighted on an oak, but soiled its feet in the water of the Flood, which was all red from the blood of the multitudes that had been drowned. Since then, doves have all had red feet. (This detail appears in part word for word in our Zambal story.)
(Arabian tradition recorded by the ninth-century historian Tabarî.) Noah said to the raven, “Go and set foot on the earth and see how deep the water is now.” The raven flew forth. But on the way it found a corpse; it began to eat of it, and did not return to Noah. Noah, troubled, cursed the raven: “May God make you despised of mankind, and may your food always be corpses!” Then Noah sent the dove forth. The dove flew away, and without alighting dipped its feet in the water. But the water of the Flood was salty and stinging; it burned the dove’s feet so that the feathers did not grow in again, and the skin dropped off. Those doves that have red feet without feathers are the descendants of the dove that Noah sent forth. Then Noah said, “May God make you welcome among mankind!” For this reason the dove is even to-day beloved of mankind. (This version is of especial interest in connection with the Visayan story, which comes from Mindanao, the home of Mohammedanism in the Philippines. Note the close correspondences.)
While it appears to me more than likely that our Filipino stories derive ultimately from Arabian sources through the Moros of the southern islands rather than through the Spaniards, nevertheless to settle the question absolutely more variants are needed for comparison.
Attention might be called to incidents peculiar to the Philippine accounts and not found in any of the versions cited by Dähnhardt:—
(1) A deity, not Noah, sends out the birds.