Filipino Popular Tales

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On his way back he happened to look behind him, when he saw, to his
great surprise, the humpback following him, carrying some fish. The
gambler gazed at him; and when he saw that he resembled exactly the
corpse that he had just buried, he said, "So you have come out of the
grave again, have you, you naughty humpback!" And with these words
he killed the humpback that very instant. This humpback was Marta's
husband returning home from the fishery.

Thus Marta tried to deceive, but she was the one who was deceived.

The Seven Humpbacks.

Narrated by Teofilo Reyes, a Tagalog from Manila.

Once there lived seven brothers who were all humpbacks, and who looked
very much alike. Ugly as these humpbacks were, still there was a lady
who fell in love with one of them and married him. This lady, however,
though she loved her husband well, was a very stingy woman. Finally
the time came when the unmarried humpbacks had to depend on the other
one for food. Naturally this arrangement was very displeasing to the
wife; and in time her hate grew so intense, that she planned to kill
all her brothers-in-law.

One day, when her husband was away on business, she murdered the six
brothers. Next she hired a man to come and bury a corpse. She told him
of only one corpse, because she wanted to deceive the man. When he had
buried one of the bodies, he came back to get paid for his work. The
woman, however, before he had time to speak, began to reproach him
for not burying the man in the right place. "See here!" she said,
showing him the corpse of the second brother, "you did not do your
work well. Go and bury the body again. Remember that I will not pay
you until you have buried the man so that he stays under the earth."

The man took the second corpse and buried it; but when he returned,
there it was again. And so on: he repeated the operation until he
thought that he had buried the same corpse six times. But after the
sixth, the last humpback, had been buried, the married humpback came
home from his work. When the grave-digger saw this other humpback,
he immediately seized and killed him, thinking he was the same man
he had buried so many times before.

When the wicked woman knew that her very husband had been killed,
she died of a broken heart.

Notes.

A Pampango variant (c), which I have only in abstract, is entitled
"The Seven Hunchbacked Brothers." It was collected by Wenceslao Vitug
of Lubao, Pampanga. It runs thus:--

There were seven hunchbacked brothers that looked just alike. One of
them married, and maintained the other six in his house. The wife,
however, grew tired of them, and locked them up in the cellar,
where they starved to death. In order to save burial-expenses,
the woman fooled the grave-digger. When he had buried one man and
returned for his money, she had another body lying where the first
had lain, and told him that he could not have his money until the
man was buried to stay. Thus the poor gravedigger buried all six
corpses under the impression that he was working with the same one
over and over again. On his way back from burying the sixth, he met
the husband riding home on horseback. Thinking him to be the corpse,
which he exactly resembled, the grave-digger cried out, "Ah! so this
is the way you get ahead of me!" and he struck the living hunchback
with his hoe and killed him.

This Pampango variant, although it is a little more specific than
the Tagalog, is identical with our second version.

Our two stories and the variant represent a family of tales found
scattered all over Europe. They are also connected distantly with
one of the stories in the "1001 Nights," and thus with the Orient
again. For a discussion of this cycle, see Clouston, "Popular Tales and
Fictions," 2 : 332 ff., where are cited and abstracted versions from
the Old-English prose form of the "Seven Wise Masters," from the Gesta
Romanorum, also the fabliau "Destourmi;" then five other fabliaux from
Legrand's and Barbasan's collections, especially the trouvere Dutant's
"Les Trois Bossus;" and the second tale of the seventh sage in the
"Mishle Sandabar," the Hebrew version of the book of Sindibad. On
pp. 344-357 Clouston gives variants of the related story in which
the same corpse is disposed of many times. For further bibliography,
see Wilson's Dunlop, 2 : 42, note.

The nearest parallel I know of to our first story is Straparola, 5 :
3, from which it was probably derived.

There were three humpbacked brothers who looked very much alike. The
wife of one of them, disobeying the order of her husband, secretly
received her two brothers-in-law. When her husband returned
unexpectedly, she hid the brothers in the kitchen, in a trough used
for scalding pigs. There the two humpbacks smothered before the
wife could release them. In order to rid herself of their corpses,
she hired a body-carrier to cast one of them into the Tiber; and
when he returned for his pay, she informed him that the corpse had
come back. After the man had removed the second corpse, he met the
humpbacked husband, whom he now likewise cast into the river.

The identity of this story with ours makes a direct connection between
the two practically certain. The two stories differ in this respect,
however: the Italian has a long introduction telling of the enmity
between the hunchback brothers, and of the knavish tricks of Zambo,
the oldest, who goes out to seek his fortune, and is finally married
in Rome. All this detail is lacking in the Filipino version, as is
likewise the statement (found in Straparola) that the wife rejoiced
when she learned that she had been rid of her husband as well as of
the corpses of her brothers-in-law.

In our other story and the Pampango variant we note some divergences
from the preceding tale. Here the one married brother charitably
supports his six indigent brothers, whom the wife subsequently
murders. In the majority of the European versions the deaths are either
accidental or are contrived by the husband and wife together (e.g.,
Gesta Romanorum; and Von der Hagen, No. 62). While I am inclined
to think these two stories of ours imported, they do not appear to
be derived immediately from the same source (Straparola). However,
the facts that the seven men are brothers and are humpbacks, and that
the husband is killed by mistake, make an Occidental source for our
second story and for the Pampango variant most probable.

I know of no Oriental analogues to the story as a whole, though the
trick of getting a number of corpses buried for one appears in several
stories from Cochin-China, Siam, and the Malay Archipelago:--

(1) Landes, No. 180, which I summarize here from Cosquin (2 : 337):

In the course of some adventures more or less grotesque, four monks are
killed at one time near an inn. The old woman who keeps this hostelry,
fearful of being implicated in a murder, wishes to get rid of the
corpses. She hides three of the bodies, and has one buried by a monk
who is passing by. She pretends that the dead man is her nephew. The
monk, returning to the inn after his task, is stupefied to see the
corpse back there again. The old woman tells him not to be astonished,
for her nephew loved her so much that he could not bear to leave her;
he would have to be buried deeper. The monk carries this corpse away,
and on his return has the same experience with the third and fourth
corpses. After the last time, he meets, while crossing a bridge,
another, live monk resembling those he has interred. "Halloo!" he says,
"I have been burying you all day, and now you come back to be buried
again!" With that he pushes the fifth monk into the river.

(2) Skeat, I : 36-37, "Father Follow-My-Nose and the Four Priests:"

Father Follow-My-Nose would walk straight, would climb over a house
rather than turn aside. One day he had climbed up one side of a
Jerai-tree and was preparing to descend, when four yellow-robed
priests, lest he should fall, held a cloak for him. But he jumped
without warning, and the four cracked their heads together and
died. Old Father Follow-My-Nose travelled on till he came to the hut of
a crone. The crone went back and got the bodies of the four priests. An
opium-eater passed by; and the crone said, "Mr. Opium-Eater, if
you'll bury me this yellow-robe here, I'll give you a dollar." The
opium-eater agreed, and took the body away to bury it; but when he
came back for his money, there was a second body waiting for him. "The
fellow must have come to life again," he said; but he took the body
and buried it too. After he had buried the fourth in like manner,
it was broad daylight, and he was afraid to go collect his money.

(3) A story communicated to me by a Chinese student, Mr. Jut L. Fan
of Canton, who says that he saw the tale acted at a popular theatre
in Canton in 1913. The story I give is but the synopsis of the play:

In Canton, the capital of Kwong Tung, a mile's walk from the
marketplace, stood a prehistoric abbey, away from the busy streets,
and deep in the silent woods. In this old monastery an aged abbot
ruled over five hundred young monks; but they were far from being like
their venerable master. Men and women, rich and poor, for fear of the
dread consequences if they should incur the displeasure of the gods,
went in great numbers to worship in the ancient buildings, kneeling
in long rows before the sacred figures and incense.

These gatherings made it possible for the young monks and the young
girls to become intimately acquainted,--so intimate, that sometimes
shame and disgrace followed. One young girl who had been seduced,
on an appropriate occasion and after great consideration, persuaded
seven of the disciples who had been engaged in her ruin to enter
her house. Then she invited them into her private chamber. As if by
chance, there came a sharp rap on the locked door; so she hid her
unusual visitors in a big wardrobe. What this young lady next did
might seem unnatural; but, with the help of her servants, she poured
boiling oil into the wardrobe, and killed the miscreants.

She next hired a porter to convey one body to the river near by and
bury it. This porter was not informed as to the number of corpses he
would have to bury; but every time he came back for his pay, there was
another body for him. So one after another he dropped the bodies of
the young monks into the swift-flowing stream, wondering all the while
by what magic the lifeless body managed to return to the original spot.

Just after he had disposed of the seventh, up came the old abbot
himself, with dignified mien. "Ah! I see now how you return," said the
drudger, and he laid hold of the priest and ended his natural days. The
old abbot thus suffered the fate of his seven unworthy disciples.

TALE 34

Respect Old Age.

Narrated by Jose Ignacio, a Tagalog from Malabon, Rizal.

Once there lived a poor man who had to support his family, the
members of which were a hot-headed wife who predominated over the
will of her husband; a small boy of ten; and an old man of eighty,
the boy's grandfather. This old man could no longer work, because of
his feebleness. He was the cause of many quarrels between the husband
and wife, but was loved by their son.

One rainy morning the husband was forced by his wife to send his
father away. He called his son, and ordered him to carry a basket full
of food and also a blanket. He told the boy that they were to leave
the old man in a hut on their farm some distance away. The boy wept,
and protested against this harsh treatment of his grandfather, but
in vain. He then cut the blanket into two parts. When he was asked to
explain his action, he said to his father, "When you grow old, I will
leave you in a hut, and give you this half of the blanket." The man
was astonished, hurriedly recalled his order concerning his father,
and thereafter took good care of him.

The Golden Rule.

Narrated by Cipriano Serafica, a Pangasinan from Mangaldan, Pangasinan.

A long time ago there lived in a town a couple who had a son. The
father of the husband lived with his son and daughter-in-law happily
for many years. But when he grew very old, he became very feeble. Every
time he ate at the table, he always broke a plate, because his hands
trembled so. The old man's awkwardness soon made his son angry, and
one day he made a wooden plate for his father to eat out of. The poor
old man had to eat all his food from this wooden plate.

When the grandson noticed what his father had done, he took some
tools and went down under the house. There he took a piece of board
and began to carve it. When his father saw him and said to him,
"What are you doing, son?" the boy replied to him, "Father, I am
making wooden plates for you and my mother when you are old."

As the son uttered these words, tears gushed from the father's
eyes. From that time on, the old man was always allowed to eat at
the table with the rest of the family, nor was he made to eat from
a wooden plate.

MORAL: Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.

Notes.

A Pampango variant of these stories, entitled "The Old Man, his Son,
and his Grandson," and narrated by Eutiquiano Garcia of Mexico,
Pampanga, has been printed by H. E. Fansler (p. 100). Mr. Garcia
says that he heard the story told by his father at a gathering
of a number of old story-tellers at his home during the Christmas
vacation in 1908. The tale has every appearance of having long been
naturalized in the Islands, if not of being native. It is brief,
and may be reprinted here:--

In olden times, when men lived to be two or three hundred years old,
there dwelt a very poor family near a big forest. The household had but
three members,--a grandfather, a father, and a son. The grandfather
was an old man of one hundred and twenty-five years. He was so old,
that the help of his housemates was needed to feed him. Many a time,
and especially after meals, he related to his son and his grandson his
brave deeds while serving in the king's army, the responsible positions
he filled after leaving a soldier's life; and he told entertaining
stories of hundreds of years gone by. The father was not satisfied
with the arrangement, however, and planned to get rid of the old man.

One day he said to his son, "At present I am receiving a peso daily,
but half of it is spent to feed your worthless grandfather. We do
not get any real benefit from him. To-morrow let us bind him and take
him to the woods, and leave him there to die."

"Yes, father," said the boy.

When the morning came, they bound the old man and took him to the
forest. On their way back home the boy said to his father, "Wait! I
will go back and get the rope."--"What for?" asked his father, raising
his voice. "To have it ready when your turn comes," replied the boy,
believing that to cast every old man into the forest was the usual
custom. "Ah! if that is likely to be the case with me, back we go
and get your grandfather again."

This exemplum is known in many countries and in many forms. For
the bibliography, see Clouston, "Popular Tales and Fictions,"
2 : 372-378; T. F. Crane, "Exempla of Jacques de Vitry" (FLS,
1890 : No. 288 and p. 260); Bolte-Polivka (on Grimm, No. 78), 2 :
135-140. The most complete of these studies is the last, in which are
cited German, Latin, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Greek, Croatian,
Albanian, Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, Lettish, Turkish, and Indian
versions. Full as Bolte-Polivka's list is, however, an old important
Buddhistic variant has been overlooked by them,--the "Takkala-jataka,"
No. 446. This Indian form of the story, it seems to me, has some close
resemblances to our Pampango variant; and I give it here briefly,
summarizing from Mr. Rouse's excellent English translation:--

In a certain village of Kasi there lived a man who supported his old
father. The father regretted seeing his son toil so hard for him, and
against the son's will sent for a woman to be his daughter-in-law. Soon
the son began to be pleased with his new wife, who took good care of
his father. As time went on, however, she became tired of the old man,
and planned to set his son against him. She accused her father-in-law
of being not only very untidy, but also fierce and violent, and
forever picking quarrels with her, and at last, by constant dinning
her complaints in his ear, persuaded her husband to agree to take
the old man into a cemetery, kill him, and bury him in a pit. Her
small son, a wise lad of seven, overheard the plot, and decided to
prevent his father from committing murder. The next day he insisted
on accompanying his father and grandfather. When they reached the
cemetery, and the father began to dig the pit, the small boy asked
what it was for. The father replied,--

"Thy grandsire, son, is very weak and old,
Opprest by pain and ailments manifold;
Him will I bury in a pit to-day;
In such a life I could not wish him stay."

The boy caught the spade from his father's hands, and at no great
distance began to dig another pit. His father asked why he dug that
pit; and he answered,--

"I too, when thou art aged, father mine,
Will treat my father as thou treatest thine;
Following the custom of the family,
Deep in a pit I too will bury thee."

By repeating a few more stanzas the son convinced his father that
he was about to commit a great crime. The father, penitent, seated
himself in the cart with his son and the old man, and they returned
home. There the husband gave the wicked wife a sound drubbing, bundled
her heels over head out of the house, and bade her never darken his
doors again. [The rest of the story, which has no connection with
ours, tells how the little son by a trick made his mother repent and
become a good woman, and brought about a reconciliation between her
and his father.]

The chief difference between our Pampango variant and the "Jataka,"
it will be seen, is in the prominent role played by the wife in
the latter. She is lacking altogether in the Filipino story. The
resemblances are strong, on the other hand. The father plans to kill
the grandfather,--a turn seldom found in the Occidental versions,--and,
accompanied by his son, he goes out to the forest (in the Indian,
cemetery) to despatch the old man. The small boy's thinking (or
pretending to think) it a family custom to put old men out of the
way is found in both stories. Our Pampango variant appears to me to
represent a form even older than the "Jataka," but at the same time
a form that is historically connected with that Indian tale.

Of our two main stories,--"Respect Old Age" and "The Golden Rule,"--the
second is very likely derived from Europe. Compare it, for instance,
with Grimm, No. 78. The "machinery" of the wooden plates establishes
the relationship, I believe. This form of the story, however, is not
unlike an Oriental Maerchen cited by Clouston (op. cit., 2 : 377). It
is from a Canarese collection of tales called the "Katha Manjari,"
and runs thus:--

A rich man used to feed his father with congi from an old broken
dish. His son saw this, and hid the dish. Afterwards the rich man,
having asked his father where it was, beat him [because he could not
tell]. The boy exclaimed, "Don't beat grandfather! I hid the dish,
because, when I become a man, I may be unable to buy another one for
you." When the rich man heard this, he was ashamed, and afterwards
treated his father kindly.

The Pangasinanes may have got this story of "The Golden Rule" through
the Church, from some priest's sermon.

Our first example, "Respect Old Age," is the only one of the three
which turns on the "housse partie" idea. This is the form found
in the thirteenth-century French fabliau "La Housse Partie;" and a
variant of it is given by Ortensio Lando, an Italian novelist of the
sixteenth century (Dunlop, 2 : 206). The only Spanish example I know
of is found in the fourteenth-century "El Libro de los Enxemplos"
(printed in Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles, vol. 51 [Madrid, 1884]),
No. CCLXXII. It runs in the original as follows:--

Patri qualis fueris, tibi filius talis erit.
Cual fueres a tu padre que trabajo por ti,
El fijo que engendrares tal sera a ti.

Cuentan que un viejo dio a un fijo que lo sirvio mucho bien todos
sus bienes; mas despues que gelos hobo dado, echolo de la camara onde
dormia e tomola para el e para su mujer, e fizo facer a su padre el
lecho tras la puerta. E de que vino el invierno el viejo habia frio,
ca el fijo le habia tornado la buena ropa con que se cobria, e rogo
a un su nieto, fijo de su fijo, que rogase a su padre que le diese
alguna ropa para se cobrir; e el mozo apenas pudo alcanzar de su padre
dos varas de sayal para su abuelo, e quedabanle al fijo otros dos. E
el mozo llorando rogo al padre que le diese las otros dos, e tanto
lloro, que gelas hobo de dar, e demandole que para que las queria,
e respondiole: "Quierolas guardar fasta que tu seas tal commo es
agora tu padre, e estonce non te dare mas, asi commo tu non quieres
dar a tu padre."

Finally may be given another Indian story, No. 16 in the
"Antarakathasamgraha" of Rajasekhara (Bolte-Polivka, 2 : 139),
which connects the "divided-blanket" motif with the old "Jataka."
Rajasekhara flourished about A.D. 900. This story runs thus:--

In Haripura lived a merchant named Sankha, who had four sons. When
he became old, he handed over his business and all his wealth to
them. But they would no longer obey him; their wives mistreated him;
and the old man crept into a corner of the house, wasted by hunger
and oppressed with years. Once in the cold time of the year he asked
his oldest son, Kumuda, for a cloth to protect him from the night
frost. Kumuda spoke this verse:--

"For an old man whose wife is dead, who is dependent on his sons for
money, who is cut by the words of his step-daughters, death is better
than life."

But at the same time he said to his son Kuntala, "Give him that
curtain there!" Kuntala, however, gave the old man only half of the
small curtain. When the old man showed the piece to Kumuda, Kumuda
angrily asked his son why he had not given his grandfather the whole
curtain. Respectfully placing his hands together, Kuntala replied,
"Father, when old age also overtakes you, there will be ready for
you the half-curtain which corresponds to the one here." Then Kumuda
was shamed; and he said, "Son, we have been instructed by you; you
have become a support for us whose senses have been stupefied by the
delirium of power and wealth." And from that time on he began to show
his father love, and so did the whole family.

In conclusion, and by way of additional illustrative material, I give
in full another brief Tagalog moral tale which seems to be distantly
related to our stories. It was collected by Felix Guzman, a Tagalog
from Gapan, Nueva Ecija, who got it from his uncle. It is entitled
"Juan and his Father."

Five hundred years ago there lived in Pagao an old man, and his son
named Juan. The latter had a wife. As Juan's father was very weak on
account of old age, and could not do any work in the house, Juana,
his daughter-in-law, became discontented. One day the old man became
sick. He moaned day and night so constantly, that Juana could get no
sleep at all. So she said to her husband, "If you do not drive your
father away from the house immediately, I shall go away myself. I
cannot sleep, because he is always moaning." Juan then drove his poor
father away for the sake of his wife.

The poor old man went begging about the neighborhood. After a long
walk, he found at last a cave where he could live. After he had
recovered his health, he found in the cave a bag of ashes. He further
discovered, that, whenever he took some of the ashes and exposed them
to the light, they became money. Now the old man went back to his son
with the magic bag. On his arrival, he was welcomed, for the couple
saw that he was carrying a bag that might contain something useful
for them.

The old man next gave his son a certain sum of money, and said, "Juan,
with this you may find another wife." So Juan gladly took the money
and went and bought him another wife. When he returned, the old man
gave his son some more money, and said, "Go over there, Juan, and
buy an old man in that house to serve us as our servant." When Juan
reached the house where the other old man was, he said, "I want to
buy your father, the old man." Juan had scarcely got the sentence out
of his mouth when the son of the old man fell on him with a whip and
drove him away. Juan went running to his father, and said, "Father,
I only said that I wanted to buy their father, but they began to whip
me. Why did they do that?"

"You see," said the old man, "you can buy a wife with money, but not
a single father can you buy."

Compare this last story with No. 31.

TALE 35

Cochinango.

Narrated by Felix Y. Velasco, who heard the story from his grandmother,
a native of Laoag, Ilocos Norte.

Once upon a time there lived in a small village on the border of a
powerful kingdom a poor farmer, who had a son. This son was called a
fool by many; but a palmer predicted that Cochinango would some day
dine with the king, kiss the princess, marry her, and finally would
himself be king.