The Great Flood

                      The Great Flood 

                                       Tinggian

The Tinggians, a group of pagan people inhabiting the interior hills of Abra, have their own story of the Great Deluge.
The tragic began with the abduction of Humitau, a sea-maiden guard of Tau-mari-u, lord of the sea; by Aponi-tolau.
One day, Aponi-tolau, god-hero of the Tinggians went down to the lowlands. He wandered aimlessly through the plains until he reached the seashore. The calm blue sea, massive and yet helpless beneath the morning sun which flooded it with golden light, fascinated the young man. And unable to resist the beauty of the dancing wavelets, he made a rattan raft and rowed seaward.
On and on he rowed until he came to the edge of the world. There, in a place where the sea and the sky meet, Aponi-tolau saw a towering rock, home of Tau-mari-u, lord of the sea. It was guarded by nine beautiful daughters of the seaweeds. The radiance of the ocean light reflecting silver and gold upon the greenish hair of the nine guards as they played around the palace gates, chasing one another in gay laughter, attracted the mountain lord.
Gathering his courage, the Tinggian warrior went nearer the palace gates. However, when he inquired what place it was, the maiden guards laughed at him and lured him further inside the palace walls. This made Aponi-tolau very angry. Taking his magic hook, he lashed at the unsuspecting maidens.
The hook hit the youngest and the most beautiful among them, Humitau. The young diwata gave a loud and piercing scream and struggled desperately to free herself from Aponi-tolau’s grip but the magic oil which the mountain lord had placed at the tip of his hooked weakened her blood and soon she was helpless.
A wild uproar followed as the guards screamed and fled the gates. Aponi-tolau hurriedly picked up the unconscious body of the sea-maiden, loaded it on his rattan raft and rowed shoreward. Shortly after the Tinggian hero had left the bauwi (native hunt) gates, Tau-Mari-u went out of his abode to see what the commotion was all about. But he was too late.
In his rage, Tau-mari-u summoned the waves and the tunas of the sea and ordered them to bring back the intruder. The waves lashed at the raft of the mountain warrior and the tunas pushed it back.
Alarmed, Aponi-tolau cried out to his mother, Lang-an of Kadalayapan, mistress of the wind and rain, for help. The great godess heard her son’s plea and immediately sent down strong winds to pull Aponi-tolau ashore. Despite the fury of the waves and efforts of the tunas, the Tinggian warrior was able to reach the shore unharmed.
But Tau-mari-u was furious. He immediately called a meeting of the gods and demigods of the seas and the oceans, who agreed to punish the dwellers of the land for what Aponi-tolau had done.
From the sky, Lang-an knew the plan. She immediately called for the north wind and sent him to warn her son of the impending flood, she instructed the mountain lord to go to the highest peak of the Cordillera mountains for safety. Obediently, Aponi-tolau took the members of his household to the mountain top and waited. The flood came. From this bauwi Aponi-tolau saw mighty waves sweeping across the plains, filling the valleys and destroying the crops and working animals of the inhabitants. Higher and higher went the water until it covered the mountain top but for the few square meters where Aponi-tolau and his household took shelter.
Frightened, Humitau gave a desperate cry. She knew that she no longer swim or live in the water after having tasted the mountain food which her husband had given her. The charm removed her sea powers. She implored Tau-mari-u to save her.
Despite his anger, the water lord took pity upon his favorite Humitau. So he called back the water and the waves. But he promised that henceforth he would sink men’s boats and drown passengers until Aponi-tolau’s crime would be appeased. When the water subsided, Aponi-tolau and his wife went down to the low lands and from them came the people of the world.

                            FILIPINO FOLK SONGS

Folk songs are, quite literally, songs of the people. And in determining the identity of a country, one can look no further than this form of music for clues to a particular culture. This list of Filipino folk songs offers a few examples of the many simple yet timeless tunes long since ingrained into the Philippine people's consciousness.

Lyrics to Bahay Kubo :
Bahay kubo, kahit munti
ang halaman doon ay sari-sari
Singkamas at talong
Sigarilyas at mani
Sitaw, bataw, patani
Kundol, patola, upo't kalabasa
At saka meron pang
Labanos, mustasa
Sibuyas, kamatis
Bawang at luya
Sa paligid ligid
Ay maraming linga

Sarung Banggi

Sarung banggi, sa higdaan
Nakadangog ako nin huni nin sarong gamgam
Sa loba ko katurogan
Bako kundi simong boses iyo palan

Dagos ako bangon
Si sakuyang mata iminuklat
Kaidtong kadikluman ako nangalagkalag
Si sakong paghiling pasiring sa itaas
Simong lawog nahiling ko maliwanag.


BEED-1B

Philippine Myth: Origin of the Moon and Stars

      Philippine Myth: Origin of the Moon and Stars

A long, long time ago, some Filipinos thought the moon was a silver crescent comb and the stars were necklaces of diamonds. The sky was said to be a mere arm-stretch away overhead. The Philippine myth goes this way.
The myth says that once, a small community lived in the middle of a rice field. They focused on rice and corn agriculture and they brought in abundant harvest each year. One of the families in the community was Maria’s family. The myth continues that people in the community were so close that they knew each other well. Maria was know there as a pretty girl.
Particularly, she was known for caring too much for her long, silky hair. The myth says it was her pride, and lots of other girls in the neighborhood envied her for it. And Maria loved it. She fancied herself the star of her village. So, the myth goes that she worked double time on her beauty, especially her long, jet black hair.

Maria cared so much for her hair. The myth says, aside from daily comprehensive herbal rituals, she regularly brushed her hair with a special silver crescent-shape comb. The myth says she let nothing touch her hair except the best material around. Even as she went about her daily chore she wore a coiled string of jewels and diamonds (supposedly common as ordinary rocks that time) to crown her hair—that’s aside from the jeweled necklace she wore.
One day, according to the myth, as she was pounding grains of corn and palay (rice stalks) in a native wooden pestle with a wooden mortar, her mother noticed the jeweled string around her head , the silver comb stuck in her hair, and the jeweled lace round her neck. She scolded her and told her to lay aside everything while working. So, continues the myth, Maria hanged the comb and jewelry on the sky above her. Wanting to finish her work in a hurry, she pounded the grains hard by raising the mortar really high. She didn’t notice hitting the sky which went up higher as she hit it with her pounding. Soon the sky went all the way up, along with her comb and jewelry. And they became the moon and the stars, according to his Philippine myth.
The myth’s lesson? Don’t be too preoccupied with vain personal beauty. Work always comes first. Too much self indulgence is bound to compromise on things that really count.

RIDDLES AND MY REFLECTION ( LIT.OO1---BEED-1B)

                 RIDDLES  AND  MY REFLECTION

                                     ( LIT.OO1---BEED-1B)

Riddle-poems are a lot of fun. They're an amusing game for children and adults, a connection to history, and a way to approach poetry that avoids the conceit and self-indulgence that lays waste to so much of it.

Anyone can appreciate riddle-poems, and almost anyone can learn to make them. By doing so, you can enjoy yourself, sharpen your wits, learn a new way to look at the world, and perhaps tap resources of creativity you never suspected yourself to have.

With the riddle-poem comes the riddle-game. To play the riddle-game, two or more people take turns making up riddles on the spot. You win points, or jellybeans, or whatever, by answering riddles correctly (we'll present some rules for a modern version of the riddle-game later). If you're feeling uninspired, you can use a riddle you've heard somewhere else, but doing that a lot is considered poor form. The riddle-game should be about creativity, not rote memory.

At this point, a lot of you are probably thinking Improvise poetry? I couldn't possibly! This isn't for me! But you can do it. One of the charms of the riddle-game is that it proves that poetry need not be an elite art. I'll show you how to make beautiful riddle-poems with simple methods that are play to use, not hard specialized work.

We know of many cultures that have riddle-poem traditions. The best-documented, and the one we'll be taking our model from, is the riddle-poem tradition of the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, and the Teutons. These peoples of the Dark Ages played the riddle-game around their hearth-fires for more than five hundred years. Some of their riddles have come down to us.

Here is a modern English translation of a simple riddle poem, over a thousand years old. It's from a very old manuscript called the Book of Exeter, which contains a treasury of Anglo-Saxon riddles. It's one of my favorites.

  Riddle: A wonder on the wave / water became bone.

  Answer: Ice on a lake or seashore.

This simple one-line poem is an excellent example of the riddle-poem style. Good riddle-poems are terse, pithy, visual, rhythmic. Like haiku, they take their power from a compelling image.

To appreciate this poem fully, speak it to yourself out loud (the slash represents a caesura or pause). In the Dark Ages, poetry was a spoken art. Poems were written to be chanted or sung. Anglo-Saxon (the parent language of English) was a rolling, sonorous, thunderous language well-suited to poetry and oration. Some of this quality comes through even in translation.