Song of Negros: Myths and Culture in the Philippines

By Victoria Hoffarth

The fantastical tales of your culture’s mythology can shape your world in ways that you don’t even realise. Victoria Hoffarth embarks on a journey to seek such myths from the Philippines, explaining the symbolic values as well as the underpinnings of 15 myths, legends, and folktales from the island of Negros, given the collective culture of the Philippines.
 
Through interesting and well written tales, Dr Hoffarth shows how myths are intimately related to history and religion – from Christianity to Islam, from ancient Greece to Hollywood, from pre-Enlightenment Spain to modern, secular Europe. Especially relevant to those interested in commonalities among peoples coming from different cultures, this is a very accessible book with a tone that bridges the gap between academia and popular literature. Entertaining, informative, and insightful, it stimulates our imagination, and encourages us to ask questions.
 
Whether you’re intrigued by the folklore of a culture rarely delved into, or in general curious about the origins and meanings of myths, Song of Negros is a go-to book for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jun 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803139036

Victoria Hoffarth

Victoria Hoffarth was born and grew up in the Philippines, before going for graduate studies in America. Married to a German national, she lived in the UK for a number of years with intermittent stays in Germany. Now retired, she divides her time between Manila, London, and Berlin.

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Copyright © 2022 Victoria Hoffarth

Illustrated by Daniel Desembrana

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

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To my BFF Paul

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Victoria Bantug Hoffarth was born in Negros, Philippines. She left her provincial town in 1964 for university at Maryknoll College in Manila, then earned graduate degrees from Columbia University and New York University. Married to a German economist, she spent years in Europe teaching in business schools and consulting on women-in-management. She now divides her time between Manila and London, and with her son in Berlin. Dr Hoffarth is the author of the book When Turtles Come Home: A Memoir on Life in the Philippines and maintains a blog: www.victoriahoffarth.com.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part One

NARRATIVES

1.Origin Myths

When The World Began

Birth of Buglas

Siete Pecados

2.Historical Myths

The Swaddled Woman

Cinco de Noviembre

The Golden Bell of Uyog

3.Religious Myths

Are Miracles True?

The Curse of Tukgawan

4.Heroic Myths

The Face of a Hero

Loneliness of Exile

5.Fables

The Reluctant Guest

The Strange Case of Mr Magdal

6.Tales of the Supernatural

Mt Kanlaon Folktales

The Black & White Kapres of Mandalagan

The Deer and the Serpent

Part Two

HISTORY, CULTURE, AND RELIGION

7.Myths and History

History of the World

History of the Philippines

History of Negros

8.Understanding Philippine Culture

Philippine Collectivism

Crossing Cultures

9.From Myths to Religion

From Myths to Religion

Indices

Glossary of Ilonggo* Words

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Preface

It is the second year of the pandemic and all through this period, I haven’t gone to a hairdresser whilst hating my now difficult-to-manage, long, still-dark tresses. Recently, I dreamt that someone was cutting my hair. The black strands were falling to the floor, curling like big spiders, and I was getting scared – I have always been afraid of creepy crawlies. The fear woke me up.

During my young adulthood, I would often have similar dreams: fingernails being cut, glass breaking, or teeth being pulled out. On waking up, I would immediately click a couple of incisors on my wooden night table, this in order to ward off any foreboding of evil. Ritual done, I would peacefully get back to sleep. Superstition? Or perhaps a reminder that I should be careful.

These subliminal anxieties were, I suppose, implanted in me when I was a young child listening to the tales of my yaya (carer). I remember being told that such dreams were omens that something very unfortunate was about to happen. You should therefore get up and bite into the trunk of a tree to ward off evil. Not having trees readily available in big cities where I resided then, I thought that, as a compromise, it would be fine to substitute wooden furniture for the trees. It surprised me that when I stopped thinking of these warnings, I also stopped dreaming about them.

I have often asked myself where all these forebodings came from. They have catalysed my interest in folklore, but until recently, I was familiar only with Western classical mythologies. It was of small wonder then, that when I visited my birthplace in Negros after a long absence, I was intrigued by the two researchers I met: Serafin Plotria, Jr. and Chona Gosiaoco. They claimed that in the course of their work, they had heard many local folktales, especially from older people. It would be a shame, they said, if these stories were to disappear when the current generation passes.

They reminded me that despite a number of stories written up about this country, very few of them come from Negros. Even Visayan folktales are often sourced from the nearby islands of Panay or Cebu. One reason is probably that Negros’s settlements were relatively late in coming. Yet, I know that growing up in Negros, I had listened to a number of these local stories about the tamawo (fairies) and the bulalakaw (fiery birds). Perhaps in future, we Negrenses can add our share to these growing anthologies of Philippine mythology. More, we can contribute our analyses as to the meaning of these myths and folktales. With this in mind, I decided to provide the two researchers with a small fund to continue their research.

This was not just out of academic curiosity or fealty to any local community, but rather a possible avenue that an ordinary person such as me could use in order to give back to the society that had raised me. I am not part of the political, social, or the economic elite, with a voice that could influence policies. But I thought there should be something, no matter how small, that I could contribute.

These folktales are, by their nature, straightforward, with little character development. Whilst easy to understand, they are also full of adventure. Readers, no matter the age, simply love stories. What if, I reasoned, we could use these tales as a vehicle to teach our kababayans (countrymen) the joy of reading? These narratives are good as reading primers and can be made available to reach a wider reading public. We Filipinos are known for our pragmatism. We are, however, poor readers.

Many critics assert that JK Rowling’s main achievement as a writer is not the artistry of the Harry Potter books but that these books encourage children to turn away from their Nintendos, even just for a while, and read! Our country is known as the texting capital of the world; what if Negros could become the reading capital, at least of the Philippines? What most of us Filipinos don’t realise is that reading not only stimulates our imagination and widens our worldview, but also develops our critical thinking. We need these attributes if we want to be discerning citizens of our country.

In this connection, I was shocked when I recently read about the devastating test results of fifteen-year-old Filipinos compared to others of the same age from seventy-eight other countries. Last conducted in 2018 by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Filipinos scored second to last in maths, second to last in science, and last in reading! A total of six hundred thousand students participated, and some of the seventy-nine countries surveyed were even economically poorer than the Philippines. In Southeast Asia, five other countries joined – Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – all of them scored considerably higher than the Philippines! The World Bank followed with an analysis of the PISA findings and recommended that we improve the quality of our teachers and our school environment.* Where most enlightened countries pour their resources into education, we have chronically underfunded our educational system.

I did wonder whether this meant our country’s future was broken. However, instead of resigning ourselves to a possible downwards spiral, we can more positively remind ourselves that, as the saying goes, a thousand-mile journey begins with a single step. Whilst formal education could be left wanting for some time to come – one cause of my disappointment with our government leaders – I hope that stories found in this book could help tease the interest of us avowed texters to get us away from our telephones, even just for a while, and learn to appreciate reading.

For the small minority who do read, there is a relative abundance of popular literature, especially action-oriented comic books. There are also a number of learned academic publications for the scholarly. However, these informative academic publications do not reach a wider reading public.

There seems to be a paucity of written, non-academic, non-fiction work targeted at the educated layperson. This book could hopefully provide one such alternative reading vehicle and perhaps bridge this gap.

The commentary section and the information on Philippine history, culture, and religion should be of interest to the so-called sophisticates as they complement the number of anthologies on Philippine mythology available to the reading public.

To reiterate, this book is intended to act as a bridge between academic work and popular literature, and it is my sincere hope that Song of Negros will not only entertain but also stimulate and inform.

V. Bantug Hoffarth

*See: https:// www.deped.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/PISA-2018-Philippine-National-Report.pdf

Introduction

In a scene from the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Prof Indiana Jones lectures his class, ‘Archaeology is the search for facts, not truth. If it is truth you are looking for, Dr Tyree’s Philosophy class is down the hall.’ Indiana Jones is telling his students that Philosophy classes are about truth, not facts. On the other hand, science is about facts, not truth.

Likewise, myths, legends, and folktales are about truth, not facts. Many of us, inheritors of the great Western Age of Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, mistakenly believe that what we haven’t experienced, or cannot be proved by systematic observation, or heard from credible scientific authority, cannot be true. Note the common parlance today that says what is not objectively true is simply a myth, i.e., a false belief or a false story. Because of this misconception, myths have been denigrated.

Myths – along with their relations legends and folktales – are fantastical stories that are not factual. For instance, according to a myth told in this book:

Kaptan, the sky god, in his fury threw a lightning bolt at Sugâ, his granddaughter, who was made of pure crystal. She shattered into thousands of tiny pieces that became stars in the night.

This is no less true than the modern astronomers’ assertions regarding the origins of the stars. The difference in these narratives is due simply to our ancestors’ lack of scientific information, but they nonetheless used their natural reasoning and answered the same questions that have beset all of humanity since pre-history. And their answers led them to make sense of what they saw around them.

Myths, therefore, are not meant to be interpreted literally. They are metaphors that people use to describe things that are difficult to verbalise, such as how to understand their world: who they are, where they come from, where they’re going. We humans are programmed to ask existential questions, to search for meaning as to why we are in this world and what happens after we die. Our answers to these are our truths, and these truths become sacred. Thus, the ancient Egyptians worshipped their astounding animal gods, the supposed messengers to and from the afterlife. Likewise, many ancient peoples prostrated themselves before the all-powerful sun. The Mesopotamian hero Gilgamesh travelled to the ends of the earth in order to answer the question of why men have to die. And the ancient Hebrews, wondering how the world came to be, wrote about their god who made the universe out of nothing, all in six days, and on the seventh day,