102. The wine commonly used among them is either that made from palms, as it is throughout India, or from sugar-cane, which they call quilang. The latter is made by extracting the sap from the canes, and then bringing it to a boil over the fire, so that it becomes like red wine, although it does not taste so good. The palm wine is made by extracting the sap or liquor from which the fruit was to be formed. For as soon as the palm begins to send out the shoot from the end of the twig, and before the flower is unfolded, that flower-stock is cut, and a bit of bamboo is fastened to it and is tied to the stalk or shoot. Since the sap naturally flows to that part, as in the pruned vine, all the sap that was to be converted into fruit, flows into that bamboo, and passes through it to vessels, where, somewhat sour and steeped with the bark of certain trees which give it color, heat, and bite, they use it as a common drink and call it tuba. But the real and proper palm-wine is made from the same liquor before it turns sour, by distilling it in an alembic in ovens that they have prepared for it. They give it a greater or less strength, as they please; and they get a brandy as clear as water, although it is not so hot [as our brandy].[18] It is of a dry quality, and, when used with moderation, it is considered even outside Filipinas as healthful and medicinal for the stomach and a preventive of watery humors and colds.
The Visayans also make a wine, called pañgasi, from rice. The method of making it is to place in the bottom of a jar of ordinary size (which is generally of two or three arrobas, with them) a quantity of yeast made from rice flour and a certain plant. Atop of that they put clean rice until the jar is half full. Then water is added to it, and, after it has stood for a few days, it is fermented by the force of the yeast, and is converted into the strongest kind of wine, which is not liquid, but thick like gachas.[19] In order to drink it they pour water into the jar. It is a cause for surprise that even though water be poured in again and again, the liquor is pure and liquid wine, until the strength vanishes and is lost, and then they leave it for the children. The method of drinking it is with a tube, which they insert clear to the bottom where the yeast is. They use three or four of those tubes, according to the number of the persons who can find room around the vessel. They suck up as much as they wish, and then give place to others.
103. The banquets are interspersed with singing, in which one or two sing and the others respond. The songs[20] are usually their old songs and fables, as is usual with other nations. The dances of men and women are generally performed to the sound of bells which are made in their style like basins, large or small, of metal, and the sounds are brought out quickly and uninterruptedly. For the dance is warlike and passionate, but it has steps and measured changes, and interposed are some elevations that really enrapture and surprise. They generally hold in the hands a towel, or a spear and shield, and with one and the other they make their gestures in time, which are full of meaning. At other times with the hands empty they make movements which correspond to the movements of the feet, now slow, now rapid. Now they attack and retire; now they incite; now they pacify; now they come close; now they go away: all the grace and elegance, so much, in fact, that at times they have not been judged unworthy to accompany and solemnize our Christian feasts.[21] However, the children and youths now dance, play, and sing in our manner and so well that we cannot do it better.
They had a kind of guitar which was called coryapi, which had two or more copper strings. Although its music is not very artistic or fine, it does not fail to be agreeable, especially to them. They play it with a quill, with great liveliness and skill. It is a fact that, by playing it alone, they carry on a conversation and make understood whatever they wish to say.
104. All of these islanders are extremely fond of the water for bathing purposes, and as a consequence they try to settle on the shores of rivers or creeks, for the more they are in the water the better they like it. They bathe at all times, for pleasure and cleanliness. When an infant is born, it is put into the river and bathed in cold water; and the mother, after having given birth, does not keep away from the water. The manner of bathing is, to stand with the body contracted and almost seated, with the water up to the throat. The most usual and general hour is at sunset, when the people leave work or return from the field, and bathe for rest and coolness. Men and women all swim like fish, and as if born and reared in the water. Each house has a vessel of water at the door. Whenever any one goes up to the house, whether an inmate of it or not, he takes water from that vessel to wash his feet, especially when it is muddy. That is done very easily; one foot is dried with the other, and the water falls down below, for the floor there is like a close grating.
Chapter XV
Of the false heathen religion, idolatries, superstitions, and other things, of the Filipinos
105. It is not found that these nations had anything written about their religion or about their government, or of their old-time history. All that we have been able to learn has been handed down from father to son in tradition, and is preserved in their customs; and in some songs that they retain in their memory and repeat when they go on the sea, sung to the time of their rowing, and in their merrymakings, feasts, and funerals, and even in their work, when many of them work together. In those songs are recounted the fabulous genealogies and vain deeds of their gods. Among their gods is one who is the chief and superior to all the others, whom the Tagálogs call Bathala Meycapal,[22] which signifies “God” the “Creator” or “Maker.” The Visayans call him Laon, which denotes “antiquity.”
They adored (as did the Egyptians) animals and birds; and the sun and moon, as did the Assyrians. They also attributed to the rainbow its kind of divinity. The Tagálogs worshiped a blue bird as large as a turtle-dove, which they called tigmamanuquin, to which they attributed the name of Bathala, which, as above stated, was among them a name for divinity. They worshiped the crow, as the ancients did the god Pan or the goddess Ceres, and called it Meylupa, signifying “master of the earth.” They held the crocodile in the greatest veneration, and when they saw it in the water cried out, in all subjection, ”Nono,” signifying “Grandfather.” They asked it pleasantly and tenderly not to harm them, and for that purpose offered it a portion of what they carried in their boat, by throwing it into the water. There was no old tree to which they did not attribute divine honors, and it was a sacrilege to think of cutting it under any consideration. Even the very rocks, crags, reefs, and points along the seashore and rivers were adored, and an offering made to them on passing, by stopping there and placing the offering upon the rock or reef. The river of Manila had a rock that served as an idol of that wretched people for many years, and its scandal lasted and it gave rise to many evils, until the fathers of St. Augustine, who were near there, broke it, through their holy zeal, into small bits and set up a cross in its place. Today there is an image of St. Nicholas of Tolentino in that place, in a small shrine or chapel. When sailing to the island of Panay, one saw on the point called Nasso, near Potol, a rock upon which were dishes and other pieces of crockery-ware, which were offered to it by those who went on the sea. In the island of Mindanao, between La Caldera and the river, there is a great point of land, on a rough and very high coast. The sea is forever dashing against these headlands, and it is difficult and dangerous to double them. When the people passed by that one, as it was so high, they offered it arrows, which they shot at the cliff itself with so great force that they stuck there, offering them as if in sacrifice so that it would allow them to pass. There were so many of those arrows that, although the Spaniards set fire to them and burned a countless number of them in hatred of so cursed a superstition, many remained there, and the number increased in less than one year to more than four thousand.
106. They also adored private idols, which each one inherited from his ancestors. The Visayans called them divata, and the Tagálogs anito. Of those idols some had jurisdiction over the mountains and open country, and permission was asked from them to go thither. Others had jurisdiction over the sowed fields, and the fields were commended to them so that they might prove fruitful; and besides the sacrifices they placed articles of food in the fields for the anitos to eat, in order to place them under greater obligations. There was an anito of the sea, to whom they commended their fisheries and navigations; an anito of the house, whose favor they implored whenever an infant was born, and when it was suckled and the breast offered to it. They placed their ancestors, the invocation of whom was the first thing in all their work and dangers, among these anitos. In memory of their ancestors they kept certain very small and very badly made idols of stone, wood, gold, or ivory, called licha or laravan. Among their gods they reckoned also all those who perished by the sword, or who were devoured by crocodiles, as well as those killed by lightning. They thought that the souls of such immediately ascended to the blest abode by means of the rainbow, called by them balañgao. Generally, whoever could succeed in it attributed divinity to his aged father at his death. The aged themselves died in that presumptuous delusion, and during their sickness and at their death guided all their actions with what they imagined a divine gravity and manner. Consequently, they chose as the place for their grave some assigned spot,[23] like one old man who lived on the seacoast between Dulac and Abuyog, which is in the island of Leyte. He ordered himself placed there in his coffin (as was done) in a house standing alone and distant from the settlement, in order that he might be recognized as a god of navigators, who were to commend themselves to him. Another had himself buried in certain lands in the mountains of Antipolo, and through reverence to him no one dared to cultivate those lands (for they feared that he who should do so would die), until an evangelical minister removed that fear from them, and now they cultivate them without harm or fear.