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    The Story of The Creation: Bilaan (Mindanao)

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    Jane
    The story describes the origins of different peoples in the Philippines according to Bagobo folklore. It tells of the first man and woman, Toglai and Toglibon, who had many children. When a drought struck, their children went out in pairs, carrying items like stones or baskets. Wherever they settled with the items they brought became the ancestral home of different tribes, like the Magindanau who carried stones, or the Bilaan who carried baskets. The last two children who were too weak to travel survived on sugarcane, and their descendants became the Bagobo people. The story thus accounts for the origins of different ethnic groups in the region.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    The Story of The Creation: Bilaan (Mindanao)

    Uploaded by

    Jane
    990 views2 pages
    The story describes the origins of different peoples in the Philippines according to Bagobo folklore. It tells of the first man and woman, Toglai and Toglibon, who had many children. When a drought struck, their children went out in pairs, carrying items like stones or baskets. Wherever they settled with the items they brought became the ancestral home of different tribes, like the Magindanau who carried stones, or the Bilaan who carried baskets. The last two children who were too weak to travel survived on sugarcane, and their descendants became the Bagobo people. The story thus accounts for the origins of different ethnic groups in the region.

    Original Description:

    Filipino myths and beliefs of how the universe is made

    Original Title

    Filipino Myths

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    The story describes the origins of different peoples in the Philippines according to Bagobo folklore. It tells of the first man and woman, Toglai and Toglibon, who had many children. When a drought struck, their children went out in pairs, carrying items like stones or baskets. Wherever they settled with the items they brought became the ancestral home of different tribes, like the Magindanau who carried stones, or the Bilaan who carried baskets. The last two children who were too weak to travel survived on sugarcane, and their descendants became the Bagobo people. The story thus accounts for the origins of different ethnic groups in the region.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    990 views2 pages

    The Story of The Creation: Bilaan (Mindanao)

    Uploaded by

    Jane
    The story describes the origins of different peoples in the Philippines according to Bagobo folklore. It tells of the first man and woman, Toglai and Toglibon, who had many children. When a drought struck, their children went out in pairs, carrying items like stones or baskets. Wherever they settled with the items they brought became the ancestral home of different tribes, like the Magindanau who carried stones, or the Bilaan who carried baskets. The last two children who were too weak to travel survived on sugarcane, and their descendants became the Bagobo people. The story thus accounts for the origins of different ethnic groups in the region.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    The Story of the Creation

    Bilaan (Mindanao)

    In the very beginning there lived a being so large that he cannot be compared with any
    known thing. His name was Melu, and when he sat on the clouds, which were his
    home, he occupied all the space above. His teeth were pure gold, and because he was
    very cleanly and continually rubbed himself with his hands, his skin became pure
    white. The dead skin which he rubbed off his body was placed on one side in a pile,
    and by and by this pile became so large that he was annoyed and set himself to
    consider what he could do with it.

    Finally Melu decided to make the earth; so he worked very hard in putting the dead
    skin into shape, and when it was finished he was so pleased with it that he determined
    to make two beings like himself, though smaller, to live on it.

    Taking the remnants of the material left after making the earth he fashioned two men,
    but just as they were all finished except their noses, Tau Tana from below the earth
    appeared and wanted to help him.

    Melu did not wish any assistance, and a great argument ensued. Tau Tana finally won
    his point and made the noses which he placed on the people upside down. When all
    was finished, Melu and Tau Tana whipped the forms until they moved. Then Melu
    went to his home above the clouds, and Tau Tana returned to his place below the
    earth.

    All went well until one day a great rain came, and the people on the earth nearly
    drowned from the water which ran off their heads into their noses. Melu, from his
    place on the clouds, saw their danger, and he came quickly to earth and saved their
    lives by turning their noses the other side up.

    The people were very grateful to him, and promised to do anything he should ask of
    them. Before he left for the sky, they told him that they were very unhappy living on
    the great earth all alone, so he told them to save all the hair from their heads and the
    dry skin from their bodies and the next time he came he would make them some
    companions. And in this way there came to be a great many people on the earth.

     Source: Mabel Cook Cole, Philippine Folk Tales (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and
    Company, 1916), pp. 139-140.
     Notes by Mabel Cook Cole:
    1. This story is well known among the Bilaan, who are one of the tribes
    least influenced by the Spaniards, and yet it bears so many incidents
    similar to biblical accounts that there is a strong suggestion of Christian
    influence. It is possible that these ideas came through the Mohammedan
    Moro.
    2. Melu is the most powerful of the spirits and the one to whom the people
    resort in times of danger.
    3. A similar story is found in British North Borneo. See Evans, Journal of
    Royal Anthropological Institute, 1913, p. 423.
    Origin
    Bagobo (Mindanao)

    In the beginning there lived one man and one woman, Toglai and Toglibon. Their first
    children were a boy and a girl. When they were old enough, the boy and the girl went
    far away across the waters seeking a good place to live in. Nothing more was heard of
    them until their children, the Spaniards and Americans, came back. After the first boy
    and girl left, other children were born to the couple; but they all remained at Cibolan
    on Mount Apo with their parents, until Toglai and Toglibon died and became spirits.
    Soon after that there came a great drought which lasted for three years. All the waters
    dried up, so that there were no rivers, and no plants could live.

    "Surely," said the people, "Manama is punishing us, and we must go elsewhere to find
    food and a place to dwell in."

    So they started out. Two went in the direction of the sunset, carrying with them stones
    from Cibolan River. After a long journey they reached a place where were broad
    fields of cogon grass and an abundance of water, and there they made their home.
    Their children still live in that place and are called Magindanau, because of the stones
    which the couple carried when they left Cibolan.

    Two children of Toglai and Toglibon went to the south, seeking a home, and they
    carried with them women's baskets (baraan). When they found a good spot, they
    settled down. Their descendants, still dwelling at that place, are called Baraan or
    Bilaan, because of the women's baskets.

    So two by two the children of the first couple left the land of their birth. In the place
    where each settled a new people developed, and thus it came about that all the tribes
    in the world received their names from things that the people carried out of Cibolan,
    or from the places where they settled.

    All the children left Mount Apo save two (a boy and a girl), whom hunger and thirst
    had made too weak to travel. One day when they were about to die the boy crawled
    out to the field to see if there was one living thing, and to his surprise he found a stalk
    of sugarcane growing lustily. He eagerly cut it, and enough water came out to refresh
    him and his sister until the rains came. Because of this, their children are called
    Bagobo.

     Source: Mabel Cook Cole, Philippine Folk Tales (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and
    Company, 1916), pp. 133-134.
     Note by Mabel Cook Cole:
    o This is a good example of the way in which people at a certain stage try
    to account for their surroundings. Nearly all consider themselves the
    original people. We find the Bagobo no exception to this. In this tale,
    which is evidently very old, they account for themselves and their
    neighbors, and then, to meet present needs, they adapt the story to
    include the white people whom they have known for not more than two
    hundred years.

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