Produced by Jeroen Hellingman, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
By
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University
Chicago
1915
This paper is based on a collection of Philippine folk-tales recentlypublished by the Field Museum of Natural History. [1] The materialappearing in that publication was gathered by the writer during astay of sixteen months with the Tinguian, a powerful pagan tribeinhabiting the mountain districts of Abra, Ilocos Sur, and Norte, ofNorthern Luzon. In social organization, government, manner of housebuilding, and many other details of material culture this tribe differsradically from the neighboring Igorot. Observation has also led meto the conclusion that the religious organization and ceremonies ofthis people have reached a higher development than is found among thenear-by tribes, and that this complexity decreases as we penetratetoward the interior or to the south. In the main the folk-tales areclosely associated with the religious beliefs of the present day,and hence it seems unlikely that they will be found, in anythingapproaching their present form, far outside the districts dominatedby this tribe. Nevertheless, isolated incidents corresponding to thoseof neighboring peoples, or even of distant lands, occur several times.
In the following pages an attempt has been made to bring together theculture of this people, as it appears in the myths, and to contrastit to present day conditions and beliefs. In this way we may hope togain a clearer insight into their mental life, and to secure a betteridea of the values they attach to certain of their activities thanis afforded us by actual observation or by direct inquiry. It is alsopossible that the tales may give us a glimpse of the early conditionsunder which this people developed, of their life and culture beforethe advent of the European.
It should be noted at the outset that no attempt is here made toreconstruct an actual historical period. As will appear later, apart of the material is evidently very old; later introductions—towhich approximate dates may be assigned—have assumed places of greatimportance; while the stories doubtless owe much to the creativeimaginations of successive story tellers.
For the purposes of our study, the tales have been roughly dividedinto three parts. The first, which deals with the mythical period,contains thirty-one tales of similar type in which the charactersare for the most part the same, although the last five tales do notproperly fit into the cycle, and the concluding story of Indayo isevidently a recent account told in the form of the older relations.
In the second division are the ritualistic and explanatory myths,the object of which seems to be to account for the origin of or wayof conducting various ceremonies; for the belief in certain spiritsand sacred objects; for the existence of the sun, moon, and othernatural phenomena; for the attainment of fire, food plants, birdsand domestic animals, as well as of magical jars and beads. Here itshould be noted that some of the most common and important beliefsand ceremonies are, so far as is known, unaccompanied by any tales,yet are known to all the population, and are preserved almost withoutchange from generation to generation.
Division three cont