Suddenly she saw her husband jump up, and, seizing a bolo, he cut off one of his own arms. He awoke and sat up and said:
“Someone must be looking at me, for one of my arms is cut off.”
When he saw his wife he knew that she was the cause of his losing his arm, and as they went home together, he exclaimed:
“Now I am going away. It is better for me to go to the sky where I can give the sign to the people when it is time to plant; and you must go to the water and become a fish.”
Soon after he went to the sky and became the constellation Magbangal; and ever since, when the people see these stars appear in the sky, they know that it is time to plant their rice.
How Children Became Monkeys
Bukidnon (Mindanao)
One day a mother took her two children with her when she went to color cloth. Not far from her home was a mud hole[7] where the carabao liked to wallow, and to this hole she carried her cloth, some dye pots, and two shell spoons.
After she had put the cloth into the mud to let it take up the dark color, she built a fire and put over it a pot containing water and the leaves used for dyeing. Then she sat down to wait for the water to boil, while the children played near by.
By and by when she went to stir the leaves with a shell spoon, some of the water splashed up and burned her hand, so that she jumped and cried out. This amused the children and their laughter changed them into monkeys, and the spoons became their tails.[8]